Bleep

While Gilroy Mere’s Adlestrop LP may be released via Clay Pipe Music, the spirit of Ghost Box Records is strong with this one. To create Adlestrop, Gilroy Mere (real name Oliver Cherer) traversed the length of the UK in order to visit rural railway stations which were closed in the 1960s after the publication of the Beeching Report. The resulting LP is at once a collection of Focus Group-style electronics, a hymn to British country life and a hauntological excavation of a past which still has something to tell us in the present.

Throughout Adlestrop, Gilroy Mere manages to maintain an air of hypnagogic wonder even as he moves between a variety of musical modes. Bibio-style modern folk lilts, dreamy electronic composition in the Plone mould, Dalham-esque downtempo delights and abstracted ambiences can all be found throughout Adlestrop, and many of the album’s timbres have a gorgeous softness to them. Adlestrop is largely an instrumental affair, but the moments where voices enter are quietly arresting - the recollections of the title-track could pass for an old BBC radio broadcast, so potently evocative is the combination of poetic spoken word and Radiophonic Workshop-style soundscaping.

Drawing its inspiration from lost British railway stations, Gilroy Mere’s Adlestrop is a fascinating hauntological work to file alongside the organic electronics of Belbury Poly, The Focus Group and Bibio.