Blogarhythms

As predicted, my “holiday” wasn’t exactly what I would call celebratory. The sky of my neighborhood was almost constantly alight with illegal fireworks being lit in back yards for blocks in every direction. But I didn’t purposefully watch a fireworks display of any sort. And while a few folks did eventually turn up in the vicinity of my door to watch the big show Friday night the real communal event happened earlier in the day when numerous residents gathered on the porch to watch the tweakers/crackheads from a few floors down self-destruct in the back alley.

The sound of firecrackers, M80’s and even professional pyrotechnics couldn’t out-do the screams, shouts and racial epithets hurled by the spiraling addicts. But I’d hardly call such human tragedy a “fun time,” so I looked for something a little more entertaining to do. The only thing of note going down was a big party, which would have been called a Rave a few years ago, at a local club where a couple acquaintances from the Drum-N-Bass community were DJing. That wasn’t really my speed though. So my attentions turned to organizing music files and picking out blog fodder.

Perhaps inspired by the Rave revival happening just a few miles away — or more likely the fact that Emeyesi played a track from their album on Wednesday’s episode of our Urban Alternatives radio program — I looked first to UK-based “New Rave” duo The Black Ghosts and their new self-titled LP. Comprised of former Simian (of Justice vs. Simian “We Are Your Friends” fame) member Simon Lord and Theo “DJ Touché” Keating formerly of The Wise Guys (a Big Beat duo known for the ubiquitous Greg Nice-sampling hit “Start the Commotion”) The Black Ghosts make music which fuses Pop songwriting, Rock riffs and Club beats, recalling the “Indie-Dance” scene of the late ’80s and early ’90s as much as contemporary Electro-Rock and so-called New-Rave.

The track Emeyesi dropped the other night, “Until It Comes Again,” reminded me of the late ’80s and early ’90s in a totally different way though. Set off by a dusty drum-break, stumbling bass riff and choppy guitar samples, the intro to “Until It Comes Again” makes it sound like it’s the second coming of Paul C or something. In fact, I half expected to hear Kool Keith and Ced Gee’s voices come in spitting their signature space-age Bronxisms at the four-bar mark rather than Simon Lord’s languidly despondent Anglo Saxonry. It was one of those “holy shit, this is on an album by a band I already like and thought I had figured out but now they’ve gone and blown my mind” moments.

The Black Ghosts “Until It Comes Again”

I say I thought I had The Black Ghosts figured out because they’ve released a bevy of singles and remixes since last year’s outstanding debut “Any Way You Choose to Give It” (the Playgroup remix is a monster!) which I’ve burned into the ground on the radio. I was so used to their singles that I was starting to think they’d never release a proper album. But they have, and the singles are all here; with the dramatic downtempo orchestral Grime banger “Someway Through This” (which I’ve gushed about, and posted the Skream & Plastician remix of, elsewhere on this site) and the tropical midtempo Disco/Soft-Rock groover “It’s Your Touch” being my favorites. But there’s a lot of new material too, like the aforementioned “Until…,” the Depeche Mode-esque “I Don’t Know,” and the Rhodes-fueled “Something New,” which sounds like a lost N*E*R*D/Spymob collabo, or something Phoenix might’ve recorded.

They also recorded a tune with Blur/Gorillaz frontman Damon Albarn called “Repetition Kills You,” which easily could have been a track from one of his bands, either real or animated. The fact that they made a cute/gimmicky video clip for it sort of hammers home the whole “this is the catchy single” feeling of the song.

The Black Ghosts “Repetition Kills You” feat. Damon Albarn

I don’t mind the repetition personally, but with tracks as diverse as “Someway Through This,” “Until It Comes Again,” “It’s Your Touch” and “Anyway You Choose to Give It” there’s no way The Black Ghosts could sound homogenized. And with nary a repetitive “untz, untz, untz” to be heard on the disc, you don’t even have to be whacked out of your gourd on ecstasy spinning a glow stick or rolling an imaginary ball to get into it.