belbury poly: belbury tales

The Belbury Tales is the fourth full length album from Belbury Poly. Usually a solo project for Jim Jupp, the co-founder of Ghost Box, but for part of this album he augments the Belbury sound with guest musicians Jim Musgrave on drums and Christopher Budd on Bass & Electric Guitar. In addition to the usual array of keyboards and analogue synths, Jupp himself plays guitar, percussion, zithers, melodica and ocarina. Its a unique yet oddly familiar soundworld drawing on TV soundtracks, progressive rock, radiophonics, and library music. Like all their album releases the music and artwork expand on the fictional / parallel world that Ghost Box loves to play with. At odds to the anodyne minimalism of much electronica Julian House's artwork like Jupp's music is lavish, detailed and witty. This is very much a concept album in the tradition of English Prog rock taking in medievalism, the supernatural, ideas about the re-invention of the past, childhood, initiation and pilgrimage (both spiritual and physical.