The final 7″ in the Other Voices series continues to explore misremembered pasts as Kraus brings her folk magic to the town of Belbury

Sharron Kraus rounds off the Other Voices series of 7″ collaborations on Ghost Box with a little help from Belbury Poly. Although even before encountering Jim Jupp’s mix on the b-side, there’s that wonderful sense that Kraus has tweaked her folk magic to give it a distinctly Ghost Box feel. The label are adept at choosing artists who complement their distinct vision while adding other angles. Once the invitations go out, the new collaborators must get on a bus to Belbury, eat a ploughman’s at the local and take a gentle psychogeographic tour. Or so it would seem.

“Something Out of Nothing” brings to mind childhood recollections of being immersed in Tolkien and wishing desperately for the electricity pylons to vanish from the countryside so that it would become Middle Earth.

The opening words are a powerful invocation:

“No matter that the table is empty / The magician is waving his wand / And out of the void a thunderclap is heard / And a goblet appears in his hand”

The overall effect is more akin to Alan Garner’s Weirdstone of Brisingamen than Tolkien however. Garner brings one close to the magic without getting rid of the pylons. So too do Sharron Kraus and Ghost Box. The modern world becomes a staging ground for the ancient, the two enmeshed in a place outside any linear passage of time.

The Belbury Poly mix playfully employs jaunty electronics that cast those same pylons as mythic markers. Sunlight pulses behind them like vistas of slowed down inner space. It’s about feeling other worlds bleed into the present with Kraus as your guide and Belbury as your destination. It’s a fine feeling for the longest afternoons.

www.ghostbox.co.uk

Stewart Gardiner
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