Belbury Poly

Working with analogue electronics and wide range of unusual instrumentation and more recently supported by session players on drums and guitars, Belbury Poly's sound is characterised as a kind of upbeat, electronic and rustic prog rock. Influences, range from old library music and TV soundtracks to keyboard driven 1970s prog rock, folk and Krautock.

Jupp has spoken about Belbury Poly and the other artists on Ghost Box as sounding like the misremembered past of a parallel world, as well as acknowledging a debt to the author Arthur Machen. The name references the fictional town of Belbury, created by the author C.S. Lewis in his novel That Hideous Strength.

The label's distinctive aesthetic draws on outdated and esoteric British cultural sources from the postwar period, including early electronic and library music, public information films, educational resources, occult stories, and BBC science-fiction programs. Ghost Box consequently became associated with the 2000s music trend known as hauntology.

Ghost Box was established in London in 2004 by producer Jim Jupp and music industry graphic designer Julian House. The label was formally launched on January 10, 2005, and was originally created as an outlet for their own musical experiments, with the idea that each release’s packaging would display a similar design sensibility and allude to a shared imaginary landscape; a very British parallel world of public information films and TV soundtracks, cosmic horror stories, vintage library music and antique synthesisers, folk song, educational programmes, English psychedelia, occult stories and folklore.