The Advisory Circle – As The Crow Flies – Ghost Box – GBX015 - *****

On this exceptional album's inner sleeve, a sixties bypass bisects a prehistoric earthwork, and the folklorist Ronald Hutton discusses seasonal rites. Within, a set of tuneful, tonal, slices of clean and cold electronica hums with post-war optimism, warped by echoes of the transcendentally bland music that underscored Seventies architects' pitches for concrete car parks.
The comforting irony cloud, that shadowed earlier Ghost Box label experiments in emotionally manipulative nostalgia, has evaporated.

Without anything so prescriptive as lyrics, The Advisory Circle offers a disarmingly sincere, pellucidly beautiful, and hauntingly disorientating exploration of your civilisation's problematic relationship with the landscapes of its past.

(10/7/11)