Study Materials

Hauntology: 

I'm slowly losing track of what hauntology is even supposed to mean in a modern context anymore, since it seems so integrated in how we listen to music and enjoy so much of our media. Like how when we listen to modern lofi hip hop and we dont even really think twice about the vinyl static bouncing in the background. The way mark fisher talks about it in his blog k-punk, however, reminds me that that there was a time where that sort of technological uncanniness was new and confused the ear. 
I might also be wrong to be quick to associate Ghost Box with hauntology, but any other description of their aesthetic feels clunky. I do have a bit of a head canon for the label, however. Most often I'm returning to acts like the Focus Group, Advisory Circle, Roj.  "...[Julian] House’s own Focus Group and [Jim] Jupp’s Belbury Poly – make sounds that are less timeless and more out of time. You know they fit somewhere, it’s just impossible to put a finger on exactly where." - the Quietus, 2013

here are a few resources and things to read about hauntology. I havent quite finished all of these words, but k-punk/mark fisher is a good place to start:half lives: a cipher of iteration
the Conet Project - collecting short wave and number stations for more than 45 yearshow to think about the future: hauntology

mark fisher: What is Hauntology?
k-punk : phonograph blues

Hauntology is just a word, however, something people have reappropriated to mean something in context with art and music. There is sort of a living version of it alive in between the cracks of history somewhere in the black country of england. The strange, idyllic, lost to time-ness of the area combined with its curious connection with psychedelia, offkilter/spooky fairy tale charm is explored in this blog, A year in the country
which seems to dig into the sort of environment you would expect a band like Broadcast to form in. Ghost Box associates and all seem to have just grown out of the scenery of depicted in this blog. Records of folkloric rituals, tucked away fairy tale sceneries,unearthed inexplicable photos of uncanny situations too good to be imagined. Its as if this little world exists, untouched by outside history, an alternate past with no clue of the direction the world was headed in. A true Belbury. ("Ghost Box is a record label for a group of artists exploring the misremembered musical history of a parallel world.") Its source untraceable without more information the era; the feeling of the time these photographs seem to come from an alternate past. This blog is an incredible gold mine of curiosity and inspiration.