The name Ghost Stations (Geisterbahnhöfe in German) refers to the abandoned metro stations of London and Berlin. Those in London were shut down at various points during the 20th century and remain closed. You can see their traces – ox blood red arched facades revealed here and there at street level or phantom platforms glimpsed through the shadows as you rumble through tunnels at speed. The Berlin stations were closed during the Cold War period, keeping silent vigil in the no-mans-land between East and West before being reopened after reunification.
There were two issues of Ghost Stations. The first was an early release on Second Language Music during the period where everything was very home made, CDrs and hand made packaging and lots of inserts. etc. It contained reprints of early London tube maps and cut-up squares of an old map of Berlin and the sleeves were Gocco printed with ghostly tracing paper bands around them. The packaging was featured on the Hard Format website.
The music was made after a trip to Berlin where I made a number of recordings of the U-Bahn system and tried to reflect something of the atmosphere and history of each location in the music. I did the same in London and split the album into two "sides", London and Berlin. Both the download and CDr versions ran all the tracks together, with no IDs to separate the tracks.
The second issue came three years later with a special live show at the Brunel Tunnel Shaft in Bermondsey, a memorable evening in the perfect venue for this set. This version was less handmade and had the same images but in a negative format. It was issued with a remix CD on a transparent CD.
Oliver Cherer
Track list
- Down Street
- York Road
- South Kentish Town
- British Museum
- Brompton Road
- Bull & Bush
- Strand
- Warschauer Strasse
- Jannowitzbrucke
- Potsdamer Platz
- Oranienburger Strasse
- Unter Den LInden
