Camberwell Now - The Ghost Trade (1986)

After the demise of the legendary U.K. avant-rock group This Heat in 1982, drummer and vocalist Charles Hayward joined forces with Trefor Goronwy and Stephen Rickard to record quieter, subdued song-based music. As atmospheric and deliberate, yet without the hard beats and cutting angles of his former group, Camberwell Now is as challenging, experimental, and brilliantly realized, and features more than an echo of the This Heat sound.

The group is driven along by a tight melodic sound; Hayward's beautiful, intellectual lyrics are more present than on the two previous mini albums that pre-date this 1986 release. Electronics and tape-loops create a rich textural backing, that on the closing title track culminates in a syncopated Krautrock groove that is elating, while the lyrical chant is a dark rumination on the flaws of Western society. "The Ghost Trade" contains some of Charles Hayward's more profound lyrical work.  

Arriving in 1986, The Ghost Trade, the group’s sole full-length LP, was what existed at the confluence of live performance and studio experimentation. Similar to This Heat’s process, the group spent two years in Cold Storage experimenting with the studio and assembling finished songs from vast quantities of tapes.

The tracks that eventually formed The Ghost Trade were songs forged in the bleak beauty of Thatcher’s London. “To me, the sounds invoked humanity trapped behind and inside a world constructed of glass, steel, and concrete, frozen inside the textures like prisoners of the twilight zone, humanity haunting a landscape it had made for itself,” says Hayward.

Tracklist:

Working Nights	7:41
Sitcom	4:40
Wheat Futures	6:11
Speculative Fiction	6:09
Green Lantern	3:11
The Ghost Trade	11:11

  
Camberwell Now - The Ghost Trade (1986)
(192 kbps, cover art included)