15 essential Broadcast tracks and the records where you can find them

Roj
‘The Gamelan Threshold’
(From The Transactional Dharma Of Roj, Ghost Box, 2009)

Listen / Buy

Broadcast’s close friend and sleeve designer Julian House formed modest DIY record label Ghost Box in 2004 with school friend Jim Jupp; the label’s manifesto was to issue dispatches from imaginary worlds steeped in English surrealism, educational programming, occult practices, archaic technologies and the dark underbellies of psychedelia. The label’s unique sounds and esoteric points of reference tied together disparate worlds of fringe culture, and a devoted cult following soon flourished around the label. Alongside the founders’ respective solo projects were releases by peers like The Advisory Circle and former Broadcast keyboardist Roj Stevens.

Roj’s 2009 solo debut The Transactional Dharma Of Roj is an immersive travelogue of atavistic electronic seances channeled through Eastern philosophies, Radiophonic tomfoolery, and the pop intellectualism of Marshall McLuhan (whose album version of ‘The Medium Is The Massage’ is essentially one of Ghost Box’s American ancestors). Its narcotic synth drones, softly clattering South Asian hand drums and disassociated spectral voices are grafted together with an attention to detail that encourages the listener to follow the album’s journey from start to finish. Aside from just one other recent 7″ single and music from a new trio including Julian House and James Cargill, Roj has been conspicuously absent from the recording world.

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