![]() ![]() No floppy fringes or bowl cuts in this band. There was nothing fey indie whimsical about it. The sound was loud, scary, dense and claustrophobic. ![]() Their mini LP Self-Non-Self was a very dark and uncomfortable listen, with obvious melodies in short supply and an emphasis on noise and what sounded like metal pipes being bashed together to create rhythms-getting to know Jim later, that was probably exactly what was happening. In the late ’80s and early ’90s when everyone was salivating over the prospect of another My Bloody Valentine album and “shoegaze” was still a genre that NME decreed it was OK to like, we became aware of a strange band from just down the road in Portsmouth who we felt were a bit like us in spirit, but a much more frightening version. We never imagined we could meet Ghost, any more than we could meet the Incredible String Band… until lo and behold, a crowd of Japanese hippies showed up at O’Hare Airport to tour with us and we became best friends forever. But this was pre-internet, pretty much, and Japan felt very, very far away. We were smitten, listening to their first two albums endlessly on repeat. The bass and drums moved with a fluidity and dynamics like we always strove for in our own playing. The arrangements by Taishi Takizawa were wildly free as well, unselfconsciously mixing traditional acoustic instruments with acid rock, and even-this was the last thing anyone expected in the ’90s!-flute. ![]() It was like he had tapped into an earlier, more flexible version of our language. Masaki Batoh sang in a weird English filled with curious vocabulary and grammatical choices, more Shirley Collins than Shonen Knife. At the time, we were immersed in folk and psychedelic classics from the ’60s and ’70s-and here were new recordings that fit right alongside them, not in some revivalist way, but simply in shared spirit. When we first heard Ghost, from Tokyo, we couldn’t believe they were a band in the present tense. ![]()
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