Paul Weller – In Another Room EP (Ghost Box)

Paul Weller’s experiments in tape for Ghost Box convincingly fit into this most particular of labels and are charmingly avant-garde in their own right

I might have underestimated Paul Weller fandom when I casually went to pre-order a physical copy of In Another Room the morning it went on pre-sale. Already gone and sold out all over. This Ghost Box 7” (beautifully packaged as always courtesy of Julian House) is limited to 1000 copies and I understand that Mr Weller is, well, a rather popular figure within certain circles. My attempt to source this piece of the Ghost Box puzzle in the physical realm was therefore destined to be unsuccessful, but that shouldn’t detract from the music itself.

Paul Weller and Ghost Box may appear to be the oddest of bedfellows on paper, but these seven or so minutes across four tracks are enough to convince on even a single listen. Weller has crafted a compelling tapestry of experimental delights, new worlds for him and us to explore together. Tape loops, fragments of orchestrations, birdsong, backwards incursions – a plethora of inviting avant-garde ideas that don’t trip over themselves into self-indulgence. It’s The Prisoner via “Revolution 9” whilst maintaining easy restraint. If that sounds contradictory then so be it, for this is a 7” of delightful contradictions.

The title track is the sonic equivalent of a door wedged open but a crack, allowing snippets of sounds to be overhead from the universe beyond. Magic is taking place inside or else the magic of places is seeping out. A piano and the chime of bells anchors this particular piece of musique concrète. “Submerged” not only snatches voices from multiple pasts, but employs strings and keys to disconcertingly gentle effect, like some cue to an imaginary Alain Resnais-directed Play for Today. Weller then cuts-up across “Embarkation” which juxtaposes pastoral field recordings with the radiophonics of early Doctor Who.

The most haunted piece on the EP is also the most Wellerian. “Rejoice” is more conventionally musical, yet its essence is so fragile that it cannot maintain substance and instead ends up as a fragment from some half-remembered dream. It becomes the accompaniment to a scene that is impossible to pin down, although consider abandoned seaside town halls transmitting the past via stone tape recordings or the cover of Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band stuttering to life, cut-out figures crawling off the sleeve. “Rejoice” is an interlude disguised as a last hurrah and is thus a fitting end to the strange and compelling case of Paul Weller on Ghost Box.