The delicious sense of mystery surrounding London outfit G.H.O.S.T is about to be come a little more pronounced as the next release – beautifully-crafted as you’d expect – hovers in the near future. So after encountering them late last year it was time to go back in and channel some more…
Hey G.H.O.S.T, what you been up to?
Easy Damian! Yeah all good, cheers. We’re just keeping it rolling right now. Along with getting this next release ready – which we’re very excited about obviously – we’ve been working hard on a lot of new music, finishing existing things off, and also been busy with the radio slot on Rude.
First off, I love the cover art on this, as stunning as ever! Does it tie in to the music here?
Thanks!! Pascal at Atelier maregrit has smashed it with the art work once again.
The tie-in is that we wanted to continue on with the series we started with the first two releases, as we felt that Pascal just got it right. We think his artwork is a great reflection of our music and it makes a statement about the label as whole, that quality is a top priority.
‘Sometimeish’ is a great title, and certainly makes me think of the times we live in… uncertainties, running after goals, time passing… what’s it mean?
In one sense it means whatever you want or interpret it to mean! ‘Sometimeish’ is a Bajan/Jamaican term, meaning someone who is moody, or cool with you one minute and dodgy the next, and it kind of relates to the floaty vibe.
It’s cool that’s what you took from it, because it’s definitely got that ‘time passing by’, rose-tinted dream kind of feel to it. And maybe there is a ‘times we live in’ aspect to it.
Meaning?
We all have to hold down full time jobs, as well as try to create and do what we do with our music, with the current climate being the way it is.
The tune has a lovely ’90s feel without being retro or anything… I love its hardcore vibe.
Thanks man! Yeah, that’s kind of what we were going for, not in terms of trying to be retro like you said or simply recreating tunes from that time, but we love using breaks in our tunes, and its pretty easy to hear the influences from that era in the bass, pads and samples as well.
Tunes from around then are at the core of drum and bass, and it’s a sound that we love.
‘Mini Ripper’ is a killer! What inspired this insanely sweet tune? Is it a certain lady?
Ha ha ha maybe, couldn’t possibly say!
Again, we enjoy going in on the breaks and giving them a workout, and taking things you’ve heard before and trying to come at them from a new direction.
Have you tested any of this wicked material live?
We’re getting some really nice support and good feedback for this release and Lewis repped G.H.O.S.T in Amsterdam for Broken Audio recently, and at Rhythm factory for a night called Kapow.
We are available for bookings and you can catch us every week on rudefm.com smashing it out!
‘Viracocha’ reminds me of travel. In fact it makes me want to travel a long way away, it’s so good. What inspired? I LOVE that female sample! And the electronica in it. Reminds me of Link…
Ha ha ha nice, you’re definitely on the right path with your interpretations!
There wasn’t one thing in particular that inspired this, but it started with a synth patch and signal chain we’d been playing with for a while that had a wicked cinematic atmosphere to it – the synth chords in the intro – and it kind of dictated that rolling, progressive, travelling feel.
Actually if you could travel anywhere, where would it be?
Road trip to America, Machu Picchu in Peru…
What sort of production techniques do you like?
We tend to use a variety of approaches and methods, and don’t really have a strict set of rules. We work in the box and also with a variety of hardware, and do a lot of sampling /re-sampling, and a lot of sound design with the synths.
It often depends on the task at hand, but we tend to start shaping a tune with simple and non over-complicated techniques to be honest. Simple eq adjustments, keeping an eye on arrangement, thinking about how to use the space and spectrum, not always relying on massive amounts of compression, quality of the samples, for example.
Then once we reach a certain stage, other stuff starts to come in, layering buses, outboard processing and so forth.
Speaking of older techniques such as resampling , what are some techniques from years gone by that you’d like to know more about? I don’t know how they did it with so little memory on devices.
Creating music completely out of the box, and using a lot more hardware is something we would like to know about! Yeah, old skool sampling with samplers is something to be admired but it’s also interesting in how it can make a producer commit to something in the moment in order to free up that valuable memory.
We’ve been rinsing the E-MU recently!
If you could collab with anyone, then who? Old or new, live or dead.
Shed, Remarc, Quincy Jones, Trim, Riko Dan, Wookie, Christian Scott…
What’s coming up next then G.H.O.S.T?
Next release is landing in the shops July 31 followed by GHST004 which will be out before the end of the year.
Possibly another GSHTLTD release as well… so keep your eyes open for those.