Ghost Ensemble: We Who Walk Again
Debut album by Ghost Ensemble
Out on May 18 as LP + Digital
Pre-order on Bandcamp
Contact andrew@indexical.org for press & wholesale.
For the past 6 years, Ghost Ensemble has dedicated themselves to creating immersive musical experiences that explore the act of listening. Ghost Ensemble takes as a common touchstone the Deep Listening practice of Pauline Oliveros, and the belief that music can be a healing force for performers and listeners. They “use sound to seek an altered consciousness … a look, perhaps, into a different dimension” (George Grella, The New York Classical Review).
We Who Walk Again opens with composer and oboist Sky Macklay’s “60 Degree Mirrors,” inspired by the “subtly shifting repetitive-yet-distinct geometric-mosaic patterns, multiplying and beautifying whatever objects live within the kaleidoscope.” Side A continues with the first released recording of Pauline Oliveros’s text score “Angels and Demons,” a sonic meditation from 1980, which calls for the ensemble to represent the “collective guardian spirits” of the angels, and the “individual spirits of creative genius” of the demons.
The album closes with “Wind People,” a side-length, monumental work by accordionist and ensemble founder Ben Richter, who evokes a sense of awesome transcendence and doom as the 10-piece ensemble builds to a crushing climax. Richter writes: “I hope to draw a sense of peace and comfort from our smallness, transience, and fragility in the face of an overwhelming immensity, the music mirroring the constant ebb and flow visible when zooming in or out to quantum or geological time.”
We Who Walk Again features musicians Alice Jones (flute), Sky Macklay (oboe), Ben Richter (accordion), Chris Nappi (percussion), Damon Loren Baker (percussion), Lucia Stavros (harp), Hannah Levinson (viola), Maria Hadge (violoncello), Rebekah Griffin Green (contrabass), James Ilgenfritz (contrabass), and Carl Bettendorf (conductor).
The limited-edition LP is packaged in a jacket printed on a moveable type letterpress in Santa Cruz, California, by Niche of Light and Indexical. The album was recorded at The Bunker (Brooklyn, NY), mixed by Joseph Branciforte, and mastered for vinyl and digital by Adam Gonsalves at Telegraph Audio.
For wholesale inquiries and press, contact Andrew C. Smith at andrew@indexical.org.
GHOST ENSEMBLE TOUR DATES: SPRING 2018
Apr 20 – New York, NY – DiMenna Center for Classical Music (Permutations Series)
May 17 – San Francisco, CA – Center for New Music
May 19 – Santa Cruz, CA – Indexical (Wind River)
May 20 – Paso Robles, CA – Lefondusac Winery (Permutations Series)
May 22 – Los Angeles, CA – Basic Flowers (Permutations Series)
May 23 – San Diego, CA – Bread & Salt (Athenaeum Art Center)
More news
4/18/2018 | Ghost Ensemble: We Who Walk Again
1/8/2018 | Announcing Winter 2018
11/8/2017 | Conversations and the wider community
10/31/2017 | Saturday at Wind River: Splinter Reeds performs Sky Macklay’s Choppy
10/4/2017 | Maidens of Delos join Oct. 15 bill with Paul Metzger and John Saint Pelvyn
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