“This album is a gritty mix of home-grown hiphop, blues, and ambient music. Take time to listen to the lyrics, follow a journey through abandonment, obsession, alienation, solitude, and resilience.”

All money goes directly to Catching Lives, available to listen online for free, if you are so inclined.

Those Who Know Darkness, See The Light,

At times, the music of Stray Ghost seems to carry an enormous weight on its shoulders, and as the paths the artist takes become hazier, the emotions produced by the music intensify. The piano, which here evolves from being a mere instrument to a being with its own tortured personality, often takes the lead as in “Instructions on Clockwork Recollection” or “The Time Chasing Lost Daylight”, leading us through closed doors to realities we perhaps didn’t want to encounter. The imagination runs wild of course with this darkly beautiful music in the background. There are also times when the ghost appears to want to let itself go and turn into a beat, but it soon restrains itself (don’t we all?) keeping us at the edge of our seat, waiting for what will come next.

Saggers shares the ability of artists such as 36 to make music that feels like a newborn breaking out of its shell, in the sense that it seems to evolve gradually and morph into something lovely and melodic. At the same time, the music remains intelligent, nostalgic, and deeply emotional. While the second half of the album is somewhat underwhelming, the overall impression we are left with as listeners is that of an artist who has written a story worth hearing, a story that is sad on the surface, may not have a happy ending, but will make us lean our head on our pillow, or our back on the chair, and think of the world’s wonders. Not bad for a ghost. (John Kontos)

Available here

Beautiful Lunar Landscape – ‘Alone In This Dark Romantic Night’

An easy choice, Beautiful Lunar Landscape have sadly split (I think?), but for a fleeting moment were on top of the world with their widescreen Shoegaze/Space-Prog meets Radiohead  EP.  Four absolutely monumental tracks from this Anglo-French outfit featuring male/female harmonies, Sci-Fi guitar, spooky theremin effects, ear-shredding distortion and a rhythm section as powerful as a bull. I am not sure what happened to this quintet, but will endeavour to find out.

Buy

HC-B – ‘Soundcheck For A Missing Movie’

Italian instrumental quintet that channel Prog, Krautrock and thundering Post-Rock into a cinematic, blockbuster of an album.  Named after the famous French photo-journalist Henri Carter-Bresson, H C-B employ a myriad of instrumentation (including both brass and string sections) to create an impassioned, often bombastic sound.  H C-B cram as much as possible into ‘Soundcheck’s…’ 50 minute running time and it actually comes as a disappointment when it ends.  Definite notes of King Crimson, Tortoise and Godspeed You Black Emperor in their sound, but ‘Soundcheck..’ is the sound of a band playing by their own rules.

Buy

Salli Lunn – ‘Heresy and Rite’

A mysterious Danish quartet with a winning mix  of angst-ridden vocals, moody atmospherics, razor-sharp, angular guitar chords and infectious post-punk hooks. Salli Lunn are a band that like to keep us guessing, but when they detonate with a barrage of screeching feedback over their ice-cool yet hopeful sound they’re a joy to behold. Produced masterfully by Jonas Munk of Manual,  Salli Lunn are a confident and vibrant bunch, rising their sound from calm Wintery soundscapes to full-volume, confrontational blasts of post-hardcore noise and twisting, hypnotic guitar lines, via slick and spacious choruses.

Buy

Sleeping Me – ‘Cradlesongs’

The work of Californian Clayton McEvoy, Sleeping Me features thick, melancholic and evocatively haunting soundscapes created entirely by guitar.  Like Explosions in the Sky in stasis or Stars of the Lid in solitude, Sleeping Me employs a balance of delicacy, power and gentle reverb to present an affecting sound that’s resplendent in its warmth and fiery beauty, finding peace in even the most heartbreaking of circumstances, rarely has the devil’s instrument of choice sounded so heavenly.

Buy

Iretsu - ’The Moon and Stars Remain in the Morning Sky’

There are no bandcamp links for this record so you’ll have to take my word for it when I say this is one of my favourite records in recent memory.  Iretsu, from Portland, Oregon, have probably moved onto bigger and (arguably) better things, but this album’s mix of Spaghetti Western atmospherics, infectious Indie-Rock and mind-bending pop rivalled 2007′s top artists such as Broken Social Scene and Arcade Fire for sheer invention.  ’The Moon..’ had the tunes too, strangely alluring with its theatrical singalongs and chants, gorgeous string arrangements and coiling guitar interplay. In Iretsu, Hidden Shoal unearthed a gem of a band.

Full Stream and Buy

Sankt Otten –  ’Wir koennen ja Freunde bleiben’

Roughly translating as “Let’s Remain Friends“, this album from the Osnabruek quartet is an ultra-cool cinematic experiment, that should be soundtracking the atmospheres of smoke-filled jazz clubs in some futuristic world.  Taking cues from the likes of Portishead,  Pink Floyd,  Massive Attack and the Ambient/Doom-Jazz of Bohren & der Club of Gore, Sankt Otten make slow-burning noirish soundscapes with seductive overtones, coloured by Oliver Klemm’s excellent guitar work, brooding, woozy synths and thick, marching drums.

Buy

Stray Ghost – ‘Each Paradise Is A Lost Paradise’

I’ve made no secret of my admiration for Stray Ghost’s music on these pages before.  ’Each Paradise..’ was a short release intended to introduce Ant Saggers wonderfully, melancholic soundscapes into the Hidden Shoal world, before the release of his ‘Nothing, But Death’ LP.  It’s a magisterial release, finding the Ghost in an unfamiliar optimistic frame of mind. Though much of the longing and melancholy, such a cornerstone of previous releases, is subtly hidden and reveals itself the more you listen. A record that resonates with much warmth and wonder.

Buy

Apricot Rail – ‘Apricot Rail’

As the video above will attest Apricot Rail make beautiful and delicate, predominantly instrumental music.  Local heroes in the Perth music scene, Apricot Rail adroitly mix chiming guitars, with playful clarinet, glockenspiel and flute, a tinge of electronics and hopeful melodies in their sun-bursting sound, reminding of The Album Leaf in parts.  While it can be very pretty and meditative, this quintet are able to change things up and can rock as hard as any of the apocalyptic instrumental acts that dominate the Post-Rock scene, ensuring ‘Apricot Rail’ is far from tedious.

Buy

Slow Dancing Society – ‘The Sound of Lights When Dim’

When I first heard this, it took all of two seconds to press the buy link.  Slow Dancing Society’s Drew Sullivan created a body of work of stunning tranquility and beautiful ambience with barely more than a few guitars and laptop.  This LP successfully mixed 80′s pop hooks, subtle electronics, Sigur Ros’ sense of the expanse and glacial notes with Pink Floyd-esque riffs, with Sullivan expertly composing proceedings knowing when to unleash gentle waves of distortion and such like. A multi-layered affair, drenched in Summery reverb, begging to be listened to while watching the sunset in some picturesque location.  Fittingly, all of Slow Dancing Society’s records have been remastered and given a deserved CD release.

Buy

Antonymes – ‘The License To Interpret Dreams’

One of Hidden Shoal’s latest releases, Ian M Hazeldine invokes the spirit of composers such as Max Richter and Johann Johannsson to create a minor-classic in cinematic music.  Monumental in scope and ambition and spine-tingling in sound, Hazeldine incorporates forlorn piano, violin, harpsichord, toy-box chimes, spoken word, angelic chanting and cello in a record that is equal parts hopeful and melancholic. Tracks such as ‘The Door Towards The Dream are as heroic and inspiring as anything you are likely to hear on an HBO mini-series such as ‘The Pacific’ and it’s clear Hazeldine’s music is destined for the silver screen, much like the aforementioned Johnannsson and Richter.

Buy

I’ve spoken of Stray Ghost before, mainly about his collaboration with Eugene Robinson of Oxbow fame, but his 2008 LP ‘Losthilde’ is the focus of this older review.  This monumental record came from nowhere and snuck into my Top Ten of that year, no mean feat from an artist I had barely heard of.  A lot of demos  landed on my doorstep that year. The majority were usually competent, but generic and repetitive stuff. Stray Ghost was different; from the first moment I listened I was transported to another dimension. Some of the most expansive, all-consuming sounds I have ever heard. Like Godspeed doing drone, the symphonic nature of ‘Losthilde’ found Ant Saggers operating in a stratosphere of his own, read my review from 2008 below:

Highpoint Lowlife have provided a veritable feast of delights recently, particularly over the first half of 2008 issuing the likes of the electric “Magnetism” vinyl and the pulsating “Dubstoned Ep” by Dutch duo Funckarma.  It is essential, though, that you get your jaws around the latest offering from the London stable. A simply colossal offering from Stray Ghost, in the shape of “Losthilde”.

The work of Oxfordshire avant-guitarist and sonic terrorist Ant Saggers, the four tracks featured here collectively clock in at almost seventy minutes, giving you an idea of the daunting aura surrounding this record.  Saggers deploys an arsenal of crude programming tools and banks of effects pedals and field recordings to create a monumental sound that teeters between the waltz-like grace of Post-Rock legends Godspeed You Black Emperor and the solar winds, charged electromagnetic pulses and vast ambient clouds found on the Voyager Recordings series.

“There’s An Ocean Between Us, You and I” is wisely split into two sections.  Even still, Part 1 runs as if it is a collection of three movements as Saggers directs the piece from a processed passage of ghostly symphonies towards a myriad of mystic, Middle Eastern textures via desolate, astrowind battered plains, over the course of its twenty-four minutes.  Part 2 also impresses, starting as quietly as a whisper before developing into a volcanic roar, with the skull-shattering noise reaching Burgess style ‘ultraviolence’ levels.

“Suadade – Part 1” is equally as epic, kicking off with a twisted mélange of fire-flecked guitar, tempered percussion and disconcerting tones speckled with froth and hiss.  interlocking sections of noise and dissonance bleed into melody and harmony to create a sound that is not of this world.  Part 2 follows suit, the elegant majesty of Saggers constantly shifting sound rivaling past-masters such as Tangerine Dream.  Its complexities, seemingly as vast as space itself, are awe-inspiring as strange atmospherics clash with industrial noise and ghostly sounds, like the evocative of being caught slap bang in the centre of a huge, all-consuming storm.

You may want to take a moment to compose yourself, pause for breath, or indeed scrape you jaw from the floor, after subjecting yourself to “Losthilde”. Saggers has created a truly cathartic piece that cleanses right to the core.  “Losthilde” is a trip and a half.  A trip of mammoth proportions.

Full Stream

Euegene Robinson, on the other hand, is a writer, poet, combat enthusiast and provocative frontman for legendary San Fransisco avant-rock collective Oxbow, who according to their website claim to be ‘the last aural will and testament of failed humanity…’.

How this collaboration came to be is unknown, but ‘Chalk White Nights‘ has a real Chandler-esque noir feel to it, undoubtedly Saggers’ work, along with a skipping percussive beat that reminds of a more sinister version of UNKLE track ‘Rabbit In Your Headlights‘ (or more accurately Talk Talk’s ‘New Grass‘, from which James Lavelle sampled the percussion).  If that’s not enough, Robinson sounds suitably dangerous half-mumbling a monologue where the word ‘beautiful’ crops up very frequently’ ratcheting the tension considerably.  Eerily cool, somebody please find these guys a label.

Hello everyone, It’s Anthony (Stray Ghost) here…
As some of you may already know I’ve been working on a collaborative album with Eugene Robinson (Oxbow) for quite some time now; but it is finally finished and is on it’s way to finding a label now.
So this seems like the perfect time to show off a piece of music from the forthcoming album, which will be titled “Chalk White Nights”
I’ll post some news as it comes through.
Enjoy.

Stray Ghost’s Anthony Saggers has been a prolific chap over the last couple of years, with releases cropping up on Dead Pilot, Phantom Channel, Highpoint Lowlife and most recently Hidden Shoal. His latest for the Australian label is a 75 minute journey divided into eight semi-discrete sections. It’s called Nothing, But Death. The title may promise a long, dark trip into doom and gloom, but the music isn’t like that all.

It’s a collection of melodic and environmentally informed ambience that begins with the sound of the sea and ends with bird song. If anything, this is a celebration of life rather than an introspective gaze at its end. Much of Saggers’ previous work has been drone-based, but here the music is much more open and coloured, with drifting, wave-like melodies composed of synth washes and string samples. There’s even some clarinet noodling on Part 2 which brought to mind images of Acker Bilk greeting the dawn on some vast, flat shore.

The key to this music is space. Not cosmic space, but wide open landscapes with sweeping skies. Somewhere to escape to, away from the claustrophobia of modern life. Yes, there is sadness in this music, but also joy. The sort of wondrous feeling that a spectacular landscape or sunset or a clear sky on a pitch black night gives you. It’s Saggers best work yet.

Tracks
1 Part 1 9:19
2 Part 2 10:17
3 Part 3 5:32
4 Part 4 4:59
5 Part 5 8:59
6 Part 6 3:26
7 Part 7 15:05
8 Part 8 17:55

Websites
www.myspace.com/strayghost
music.hiddenshoal.com

Anthony Saggers aka Stray Ghost has been prolifically building up a fair profile with four releases in around eighteen months. The latest is a download-only mini LP featuring three tracks based around melancholy organ loops and drones.

This is calm, reflective music, rich in texture. Opener “La Belle Semaine” builds and fades, before resuscitating with a lightly touched sequencer pattern. The ghosts of sampled voices lead into the haunting and ethereal chimes of “Au Revoir à la Belle Semaine” whilst the closing “Réminiscences Et Rêves De Beauté” gradually decays into nothingness as Saggers tips a nod to William Basinski’s Disintegration Tapes series.

While there is nothing startlingly new here, Each Paradise is a Lost Paradise holds the attention. It also seems the least troubled and dark of the four Stray Ghost releases to date.

Tracks
1 La Belle Semaine 10:42
2 Au Revoir à la Belle Semaine 5:11
3 Réminiscences Et Rêves De Beauté 10:28

Websites
music.hiddenshoal.com
www.myspace.com/strayghost

Just a few months after the release of the excellent Losthilde, Ant Saggers returns under his Stray Ghost moniker with another slab of angsty ambience.

A House of Gold and Oak isn’t exactly an EP, consisting, as it does, of a single track that spins out over nearly twenty minutes. It’s far less concrete and structured than anything on the album, more a slow, icily calm symphonic drone piece that is redolent of William Basinski’s more expansive works or some of the more recent material by Stars of the Lid. Its power is in its simplicity – it doesn’t change much, but has a hypnotic quality to it.

The track is available as a free download from Phantom Channel.

Tracks
1 A House of Gold and Oak 19:40

Websites
www.myspace.com/strayghost
www.phantomchannel.co.uk/

Ant Saggers aka Stray Ghost is a new name to me, but although this is his first physical release, it hardly sounds like the work of an optimistic young pup. Losthilde has the heavy weight of years of disappointment on its shoulders. It’s a kind of epic symphony of loss in four movements.

The opening ten minutes of the suite is funereal, with a mournful chord sequence played on what sounds like a guitar morphed into a cello. There is a distinct break halfway through the first piece as a babble of radio-static voices enter and fade into a stately, other-worldly guitar/cello and piano coda which swirls, ebbs and flows like a cosmic dust storm. The second part of “There’s An Ocean Between Us, You And I” starts with a crackle of electrostatic and gradually builds into an epic of controlled feedback, ending in a drawn-out drone of bass hum and the gently fading chime of a guitar chord.

Things don’t get cheerier through the two part “Saudade”, but they do get a hell of a lot angrier. Drums kick in, playing a slow march as great slabs of distorted guitar threaten to turn things into a Sunn0))) doomfest. But amidst the Sturm und Drang there are more reflective patches that are more akin to Loren Connors’ electric work. It never gets stuck in any particular groove for too long, but constantly shifts in tone and volume. There are plenty of drone-rock elements, but none of the “will this do” repetitive chord-bashing that makes so much doom metal (or whatever you want to call it) so dull. “Saudade Part Two” is almost like a summary of all that precedes it, with the melancholy drones of the album’s opening sequences splashed with drops of molten guitar and flashes of white noise. It splutters and creaks to a halt – no grandstanding epic finish here. Like most journeys, and most lives, the ending is anticlimactic.

Losthilde is an impressive work that manages to fill its epic length without resorting to the repeat-till-the-tape-runs-out excesses that some records of this ilk exhibit. It’s one of the most successful hybrids of quiet reflection and fierce noise that I’ve heard for a while, but never gets stuck in that quiet-build-loud-end cliché.

The album is available as a download and as a limited edition CDR from the Highpoint Lowlife website (see below). There’s also another collection, simply entitled Stray Ghost, on the site which is available for free. I’ve downloaded it, but not played it as yet.

Tracks
01 There’s An Ocean Between Us, You and I – Part One 23:52
02 There’s An Ocean Between Us, You and I – Part Two 12:19
03 Saudade – Part One 17:11
04 Saudade – Part Two 14:29

Websites
www.highpointlowlife.com
www.myspace.com/strayghost