A Stonecirclesampler Research Guide to Hauntology Part I
I’ve talked a lot about Hauntology on this blog, and am often asked by curious customers exactly what it is. I won’t go into explaining it here, as it isn’t easy, and one reason for that is that opinions of it will vary. For me it is a pop-cultural phenomena, and one that should resonate most strongly with those of the Haunted Generation – anyone who grew up in the UK in the 1970s & early ’80s. So I find it fascinating as to how and why anyone of a younger generation might also feel a connection to it, or have an interest in it that might extend beyond mere curiosity or liking a tune or two. One such person is Stonecirclesampler, aka Luke Murray.
Luke is a prolific producer, sonic architect, event organiser and commentator in the field of Hauntology, and has released a series of solo works and collaborations, most of which have been as ultra-limited editions on cassette or 7-inch, and which will often sell out in the time it takes to say ‘Happy Day’. I have always thought of hauntology as being of the margins, the hinterland between real and the imaginary and, in physical terms, the spaces that exist between towns & cities and the countryside. Stonecirclesampler’s music has that dream-like but vaguely sinister quality that is common in many sounds associated with hauntology, but there is also a strong sense of the urban as opposed to the rural, similar to that heard in the early output of Burial, and more latterley in the work of Warrington-Runcorn Newtown Development Plan. To explain from his own perspective, over to Luke…
“The living can assist the imagination of the dead … If we can learn to listen and to wait, we might still serve some purpose, add a few words to the record.” – Iain Sinclair, The Last London
This guide is how I interpret Hauntology, as a layer across the city built from the ghosts of past events and soundtracks. It drifts from 2am ambient recordings made in post-punk bedsits in long-gone tower blocks in South of the river neighbourhoods, to old crumbling set eerie TV plays with Radiophonic soundtracks that were seen once & then forgotten, but now endlessly replayed over and over on YouTube. From Hackney to Hawksmoor, psychogeographic pamphlets of erased London histories, to the folklore of the pubs along The Strand, and into the Soho pubs with their pulp writers conjuring up rain-and booze-soaked noir mysteries set in the local streets. It travels out to frozen-in-time suburbs where the underground trains don’t reach, but Morris dancers keep ancient traditions alive and record shops like Logo Fiasco channel early Ghost Box transmissions and rediscovered psychedelic folk albums to the locals every Saturday. This list is the first part of my own interpretation of and as a guide through what I deem to be Hauntology in the modern age.
Stewart Lee on Arthur Machen, BBC Radio 4, The Verb https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0542jwq
A folkloric fog that plunges London into the uncanny, this radio recording is an incredible and unbeatable piece that educates and acts as the gates into Machen’s urban underworld, and the drifts across the city it maps out for the reader.
Pre-Cert Home Entertainment – Anworth Kirk, Avonwaith & Shacklecross LPs https://www.nts.live/shows/andy-votel/episodes/andy-votel-s-randomonium-23rd-august-2020
Named after the crumbling church in The Wicker Man, Andy Votel’s pre-certified VHS grot, Applehead fakelore recordings as Anworth Kirk arrived on collectable private/small-press vinyl that were shrouded in artist-alias mystery. Creating a tape loop between the Finders Keepers library, soundtrack and folk reissues with the burgeoning 2010s Hauntology scene, the psychic connection was most strongly linked with the albums of Broadcast, which were a constant soundtrack at the label office when I worked there in those days. These albums stood out as singular in a unique scene that was building around other key but unique projects of the time such as The Caretaker, Ghost Box, Folklore Tapes, Ekoplekz and the early Trunk records catalogue.
The Bridge LP by Robert Rental & Thomas Leer https://robertrental.bandcamp.com/album/the-bridge
London’s answer to Bowie’s Low, side one a selection of machine-drum-driven post-punk experiments, and side two a drift through spectral ambience of the outer edges of Battersea nightlands. With the Albert Bridge on the record sleeve in stark, monographic grey, The Bridge’s title and cover create an image more haunting than any future-past hauntology discovery you could hope to discover, washed up on the shores of the Thames.
McLoughlin / A. Cooper – Natural Lancashire / Supernatural Lancashire LP https://www.finderskeepersrecords.com/shop/s-mcloughlin-a-cooper-natural-supernatural-lancashire/
– A cross-country journey through traditional Lancastrian homespun folk by day, and pub-lore moors ghost stories by night. This album of library recordings upon release sat comfortably alongside frostbitten Berlin techno and 80s cassette-culture post-punk on a key early Blackest Ever Black mixtape, but also acted as the perfect bar soundtrack spin in the bar at the hauntological film club Hocus Focus run by myself, David Orphan of Folklore Tapes & Andy Votel in the early 2010s. Highly recommended to fans of The Focus Group.
Gutterbreakz blog posts:
18 January 2006 — “HAUNTOLOGY? WHAT’S ALL THAT ABOUT, THEN?”
13 May 2009 — “SAPPHIRE & STEEL”
29 January 2009 — “G SPOTS”
18 July 2008 — “RON GEESIN’S ELECTROSOUNDS”
16 March 2006 — “YESTERDAY’S TOMORROW” // Link – https://gutterbreakz.blogspot.com/?m=0
An online archive of incredible content, from real-time early musings on the 2010s Hauntology scene to charity-shop Sapphire & Steel VHS reviews. In this indispensable online archive The Tomorrow People and KPM library electronics are filed next to shop links for then-early dubstep 12″s (with prices a couple of hundred pounds cheaper than you’d ever find them now). The Gutterbreakz blog is for fans of Hauntology equally as important as Mark Fisher’s Ghosts Of My Life or Simon Reynolds’ scene-defining piece on Ghost Box, Trunk and Mordant Music for The Wire. A beyond-incredible treasure trove of content to read (recommended posts above to search on the blog first are a great place to start; then work your way through the rest — if you’ve got this far in the guide then you won’t be disappointed).
English Weather – Bob Stanley & Pete Wiggs LP compilation https://www.saintetiennedisco.com/compile/zb/englishweather2.html
The sound of a dismal 1970s autumn, lots of melancholy prog rock and folk drifts set to soundtrack being sat in run-down cafes with steamed-up windows on dull Saturday afternoons. Like The Bridge the record cover here is haunting in its melancholic lull, and with a classic Basil Kirchin track inside, this is the perfect stop for anyone looking to journey backwards, towards the early edges of hauntology.
Iain Sinclair & Paul Green – The Lud Heat Tapes 1979 https://www.iainsinclair.org.uk/2025/07/05/the-lud-heat-tapes-1979-a-limited-edition-of-50-by-concrete-atlantis-to-be-released-at-the-end-of-july/
A time-travelling psychogeographic 1979 BBC radio documentary that was never aired at the time, yet haunted independent bookshops like Compendium for years way back when. Resurfaced this year for the 50-year anniversary of Lud Heat as a 50-copy cassette, issued by myself and my partner in grime Travis Elborough as part of our London events, walks and audio editions series Concrete Atlantis.
Demdike Stare — Tryptych 3CD https://boomkat.com/products/tryptych-ac89e9f1-7dde-44dd-a0e3-621b3e69e6c5
Mystical Lucifer-over-Lancashire electronics, a mixture of Finders Keepers library recordings & private-press spectral folk, mixed with 90s Berlin dub techno and rung out with Manchester rainfall. A perfect soundtrack for riding the Witch Way bus out of central Manchester towards the satanic mills that haunt the north-west skyline.
Julian Cope — The Modern Antiquarian (Virgin In-Store Promotional CD) https://www.discogs.com/release/1571588-Julian-Cope-The-Modern-Antiquarian
Stones and drones, incredible spoken word readings by Cope from The Modern Antiquarian, with a megalithic ambience and ley-line transportation. The key influence for the MEMOREX cassette myself and Travis released as our first collaboration.
The Fates — Furia album https://www.finderskeepersrecords.com/shop/the-fates-furia/
Pagan drone-folk rediscovered by David Orphan in the late 2000s one Saturday somewhere in South Manchester. Imagine The Wicker Man soundtrack if it were made by The Fall (honestly).
David Cain — The Seasons (BBC Radiophonic Workshop) https://trunkrecords.greedbag.com/buy/the-seasons/
Ground zero for hauntology, from the autumnal ambience of the cover (similar image to what you’d see on a dead-of-winter walk through the park beside Logo Fiasco), to the spooky poetry about houses like skulls in the autumn and letters that if sent will never be read. Core curriculum lost-memory-making hauntology that still sounds like nothing else on this list, or the wider world.
Penda’s Fen and The Edge Is Where The Centre Is book https://www.texteundtone.com
A brilliant limited-print book with a David Rudkin & Mordant Music flexi-disc that transports us to the lost classic Malvern Hills-set Play For Today, Penda’s Fen. This incredible document set the scene for subsequent years’ books from Strange Attractor and Ten Acre. In tradition with the play, copies are as hard to find as the film was until recent years, an underground classic in every sense.
England’s Hidden Reverse: A Secret History of The Esoteric Underground — David Keenan https://strangeattractor.co.uk/shoppe/englands-hidden-reverse-new-edition/
Beyond essential and utterly remarkable hallucinogenic history of the esoteric and occult industrial underground scene of which Nurse With Wound, Current 93 & Coil were the centre. Most things in this list will change your life, while this will more likely alter it.
Night Haunts: A Journey Through the London Night — Sukhdev Sandhu https://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/oct/31/night-haunts-sukhdev-sandhu-review
Urban psychogeography and city mapping immersion into an entirely other world. Best read sat on the Thameslink loop from Logo Fiasco up to St Albans (home of haunted DNB pioneers Source Direct) and back for maximum immersion in the hauntological London night.
Slade In Flame (1975 film) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slade_in_Flame
Bleakest of bleak 1970s Get Carter-grim and full-of-gristle and grime film. A bleak landscape where everything is dimly lit and gloomy. A haunted-house smashed-window view into a world where the English Weather record cover is every street, and the schools play The Seasons on repeat.
Geoffrey Burgon – Terror of the Zygons soundtrack (1975) https://www.discogs.com/release/887587-Geoffrey-Burgon-Doctor-Who-Terror-Of-The-Zygons
Ghostly library-folk recording for an old Loch Ness Monster–themed episode of Doctor Who, like The Wicker Man soundtrack if, er, it was a science fiction film. Rarely heard apart from the episodes — it’s highly worth tracking down if you’ve played/burnt The Wicker Man OST to death and need a new Summerisle soundtrack.
Adrift in Soho (Beatniks, Bums & Bohemians series) — Colin Wilson https://www.amazon.co.uk/Colin-Wilson-Adrift-Bohemians-Paperback/dp/B00RWP38U0
More superior London pulp, a time capsule of a long-lost Soho come back alive with a cast of genuinely brilliant characters having amazing adventures. Be warned: it’s highly addictive and once tasted will soon have you returning any chance you get to its murky wasteland.
Mordant Music & Chris Petit – Mol Live (Kino In Die Brücke, Köln, 27-10-15) https://baronmordant.bandcamp.com/album/mol-live-kino-in-die-br-cke-k-ln-27-10-15-mm084
Evergreen and essential transporting hauntological recordings of spoken word and eerie electronics that start in Germany in 1957, and meet everyone from Kraftwerk, the Beat poets and James Angleton. Another 15 years passes and it arrives in 1993, driving a Jaguar across the plain of Northern Europe with Chris Petit’s landmark novel’s main character Robinson sat in the back, suddenly made vulnerable by the absence of the city around him.
“7 ‘wyrd’ TV programmes from 1977 – a golden harvest of folk horror” — BFI online article (20 March 2017) https://www.bfi.org.uk/lists/tv-folk-horror-1977
Fantastic article that maps out a selection of brilliant 1970s grot TV plays. Like Gutterbreakz, it’s an inexhaustible TV guide of hauntological enjoyment, perfect to line up and watch on your next autumnal Saturday night in.
Further research available in the Hauntology section at Logo Fiasco Records.
You can explore the work of Stonecirclesampler in more depth here: https://stonecircledrift.bandcamp.com/
