South Wales-raised graphic designer Julian House's eerie and electronic sound collage project the Focus Group was born out of his co-founding of the Ghost Box label with Jim Jupp in 2003. Built around uncommon, disjointed loops of anything from textured woodwind samples to excerpts from vintage percussion LPs, the music House released as the Focus Group was equal parts comforting and unsettling. Inspired by '50s electronica, '60s British jazz, and '70s library music, House's audio collages -- beginning with 2004's Sketches and Spells -- offered vague glimpses of what our musical landscape could have been like if the distorted electric guitar had not been the archetypal late-20th century rock & roll star's instrument of choice. ~ James Wilkinson