Alex Martin introduces a pair of seasoned haunters...
Inconveniently, perhaps, for the purposes of a column entitled “New Artists”, the haunting saisonniers behind Ghosting Season are not, in fact, new to musical artistry at all; they have been playing alternative rock music under the name worriedaboutsatan for over 4 years pre-transition to out-and-out electronica, and were, by all accounts, doing a pretty good job of it. Their conversion to an exclusively synthetic medium, and to an uber-atmospheric, technoid sonic palette which verges, at particularly string-led points, on the neo-classical, represents a cardinal development in their almanac - one they discuss in depth in this excellent interview with James Balf and Oli Marlow.
Last time I wrote this column Deadboy was the spotlit artist, and I commented on the fact that the morbidity implied by his industrial sobriquet was not in any way an accurate reflection of the mood conveyed by his sound. In the case of Ghosting Season, as with yesteryear’s rock-based incarnation of the winning double act, reference to incorporeal being, to death anxiety, and to Beelzebub is not quite so misleading. In both guises the mood is, as they say, moody.
To date their output numbers a lone but spell-binding E.P. entitled 'Far End of the Graveyard'. The eponymous title track bubbles like a witch’s cauldron, distorted synth riffs rising like vapour from the murky brew simmering within, while ethereal incantations float forth from the green-lipped mouths of assembled necromancers, an insistent bass drum conjuring up the thud of calloused heel on forsaken earth, warty digits on hog-skin bongo.
The listener is treated to an all-body dark cleanse, akin to that which one imagines an automobile’s body work would undergo by means of the emptying of the contents of a bottle of black food colouring into the pipes at the car wash. 'Far End of the Graveyard' is what I like to think would be playing in my head were I to lower myself into an isolation chamber at a health spa feeling entirely at ease with the doom and gloom inherent in my imminent resting place. In particularly bloody-minded trances, for ‘isolation chamber’, read ‘coffin’ - mind still completely at ease. It is that soothing to the ear.
And for all this morbidity-related verbosity, the sound introduced by Ghosting Season’s debut release contains within it a tremendous capacity to induce upliftment, redemption and even euphoria, at the same time comparable in portent with the best of mood pieces by Moderat and Xploding Plastix, and - in the case of the orchestral intro to the E.P.’s panting silver medallist, 'Exercise Us' - the late Gustav Holst.
Ghosting Season's 'Far End of the Graveyard' E.P. is out June 20th on their own This Is It Forever imprint.
They play at London's The Scala in Kings Cross, July 25th alongside Apparat.
Far End Of The Graveyard EP by Ghosting Season
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