The Owls Map

Description

The Owls Mapsome of the most delightful electronica to arise in Britain since Aphex Twin, the Black Dog and Global Communication. Bethan Cole, The Sunday Times

First released in 2006, The Owls Map was the second LP from Belbury Poly, the recording alias for Ghost Boxs co-founder Jim Jupp. By turns jaunty and dark, the music was inspired by TV soundtracks, library music, English folk music and 1970s electronic music technology. Although its antecedents may have been Boards of Canada, Stereolab, Plone and the Look Around You TV series, this album was to set the tone for the now familiar hauntological culture of Penguin book style packaging, 70s horror movie occultism, blogs from imaginary English towns, ersatz public information films and darkly ironic fakes of forgotten childrens TV & books.

The Owls Map has been re-mastered by Jon Brooks for this first outing on vinyl. Ghost Box designer, Julian House has adapted the original CD artwork and text to the new heavyweight vinyl format. It includes a colour card inner sleeve with a visitors guide to Belbury and a free download code card.

If Ghost Box are the torch bearers for the hauntology zeitgeist, as Simon Reynolds suggests in The Wire 273, then label cofounder Jim Jupps Belbury Poly is the psychogeographer amongst his cohort. On The Owls Map Jupp aims for nothing less than the (re)creation of previously unknown topography.
Jon Dale, The Wire

Belbury Polys music, while ripe with anodyne melodies and soft-toothed waveforms, is unsettling. What unsettles, of course, isnt just the thought that all the snoozer science reels called to memory were actually much more quietly batshit and fascinating than Id ever realised as a kid. Its the possibility that my memory has distorted it even further, that my reaction to Jupps music is itself queasy, misfired nostalgia.
Mike Powell, Stylus