The Japanese psych-folk and kraut band’s first three albums send messages from the ruins of rock music.
Ghost founder Masaki Batoh has often said that guitarists from the sixties and seventies had the greatest influence on him, especially Tom Rapp (Pearls Before Swine), but also Bert Jansch, John Renbourn and Martin Carthy. When he recorded the first album with his band Ghost, Batoh was looking for a form of improvisation that could be captured on record, a difficult undertaking that almost made him despair.
A syncretic statement from a psychedelic cult
The songs that later appear on the Japanese band’s 1990 debut (released four years later in Germany by Strange Ways Records) hardly convey anything of the majesty of the British and American guitar artists; Ghost’s still embryonic sound articulations are more reminiscent of a Far Eastern beat fair based on motifs by Amon Düül, a syncretic statement from a psychedelic sect that sends us messages from wide spaces (the musicians had temporarily discovered temple ruins and abandoned subway shafts as homes).
Songs like the eleven-minute “Ballad Of A Summer Rounder” are decisively permeated by percussion and flute tones, “Guru In The Echo” is close to early Can recordings. The Chicago label Drag City has now re-released the debut, which dates back to the time when it was made and refers to various folk traditions, with the somewhat quieter, more ballad-like follow-up album SECOND TIME AROUND (1992) and the live collection TEMPLE STONE (1994, improvisation, drone). After various collaborations (including with Espers’ Helena Espvall), Masaki Batoh is now moving back towards the sound world of Ghost: currently in a project with the album AN EVENING WITH NEHAN.