New Ghost To Falco Vinyl Out This Month (With Guest Appearances Galore! MP3s here!)-- Local Cut

New Ghost To Falco Vinyl Out This Month (With Guest Appearances Galore! MP3s here!)

November 11th, 2009 [2:24PM] Posted by: Casey Jarman | 2 COMMENTS

Whoah, this was unexpected. We knew Portland experimental rock/folk/etc. trio Ghost to Falco had been touring a lot, but we didn’t know there was a record coming out so soon. The band, currently in Europe, will release third full-length Exotic Believers as a ~~vinyl-only~~ (I’ve been informed that there will also be a CD version) release before the month is out.

If you haven’t checked out Ghost to Falco, you really should. Eric Crespo’s group plays a lyrically conscious experimental folk-pop with nods to post-punk acts like Fugazi and Cursive. Just when one anticipates Crespo’s next twist or turn, he injects a jazzy departure or wall of noise into the mix. And while Crespo has played with a handful of musicians under the GtF monker, the band’s recent local lineup—with AAN’s Bud Wilson and Ohioan’s Ryne Warner—is quite a formidable one.

Even more exciting, this new release features appearances from an impressive list of local contributors (highlighted below). Fans of Portland’s experimental music and pop scenes should have their jaws drop a bit at it.

Here are two of the disc’s tracks, “Secrets of the Free” and “Comfort Series #2.”

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Unfortunately, Crespo and his crew won’t be home to celebrate the record’s release until the aforementioned Infinite Front label debut and Exotic Believers release show on Jan. 16 at Artistery. But holy cow is that going to be a show. Here’s a chunk of the press release:

Ghost to Falco’s long awaited, highly anticipated follow-up to 2007’s Like This Forever is finally being released on vinyl. Exotic Believers is an achievement in forward-thinking/ancestor-respecting experimental music. It was recorded over a year between tours onto an analog 1/2″ 8 track machine in a giant warehouse. In addition to songwriter Eric Crespo and GtF mainstays Ryne Warner and Bud Wilson, Exotic Beleivers features performances from musical acts such as Dragging an Ox through Water, Evolutionary Jass Band, Horse Feathers, Shaky Hands, Argumentix, Parenthetical Girls, Reporter, Au, and many more. This is a split release with Portland’s Infinite Front collective.

You’ll be able to order the disc shortly at Cape & Chalice Records (or pick it up, presumably, from finer local retailers). If you’re hungry for more info on GtF and the new disc, here’s the band’s new bio, which explains how the new disc and its many collaborations came about:

Ghost to Falco strives. It strives to reach the unattainable—the perfect chord progression, the combination of tones that unlock secret passages and long forgotten dreams, the unknowable, the unanswerable, the mystery tied into existence. And it does so with a level of honesty that is more in line with the void-probing writers of bygone eras, than with the plethora of modern freak folkers or neon-clad, technology-addled trend setters.

Ghost to Falco is essentially the brain child of one, Eric Crespo. Starting in 2001 as a one man guitar symphony of sorts, he set out on a solitary path onto the highways of America, crisscrossing it more times than he could count, playing any ramshackle living room or dwindling institution of live music he could find. As long as there was anyone who cared to listen, he was happy to share his unique quest to bridge the gap between his two loves; avant-garde weird America and the more tuneful turf of the enlightened songwriter. Eventually he added Europe to his touring repertoire and released two fantastic, but under the radar full lengths, on fledgling labels—2004’s torn or broken, shadowed or dark, cast off all doubts and ride the flames to freedom and 2007’s Like This Forever.

In 2007, after returning from a month and a half of solid touring in Italy and Germany, Crespo came back to his adopted home of Portland, OR and got to work on the recordings that would become the third Ghost to Falco album, Exotic Believers. Recording took place in a makeshift studio housed in a former Oriental rug warehouse downtown, two blocks from Powell’s Book Store—all of it recorded on a ½ inch analog 8 track machine—an old fashioned recording device made for amateur hobbyists, being used here to its full capacity by an obsessive auteur to create a magnum opus that he couldn’t be sure would ever see the light of day. No labels hassling about the release date. It simply had to get made for the sake of getting this stuff out of a brain and into the world. There was no choice and he worked with what he had. Between continuing to tour, the schedules of the 30 collaborators, and the perfectionism of the mastermind, the project was two years in the making. But good god it was worth it.

The role of the 30 Portland folks who played on this thing cannot be underestimated. Super hotshots like Brian Mumford (Dragging an Ox through Water), Jonathan Sielaf (Au), Heather Broderick (Efterklang, Horse Feathers), Nick Delffs (Shaky Hands), Bob Jones (Evolutionary Jass Band), Rachael Jensen (Parenthetical Girls), Nick Bindeman (Jackie O Motherfucker, Tunnels), Mike McKinnon (Reporter), and O Ryne Warner (Ohioan, Castanets) to name a few, appear to have roles written specifically for their talents in this vast soundscape. “It should have some Brian Mumford style gnarly electronics here,” or “This needs Mike Mckinnon hitting the drums really hard here” or “Bob Jones should be bowing super low notes on the double bass here.” Couple solid structure with the spontaneous combustion of mega talents feeding off one another in the same studio and the result is an inspired collaboration that showcases what the best of the best are bringing to the table these days.

Stylistically, there are familiar touchstones here and there. One could reference some early Neil Young, maybe a hint of SPK, some old Alan Lomax southern field recording there, some Steve Reich here, some Leonard Cohen there. Not in direct conscious influence from these artists, but rather the writer’s brain momentarily tuned into and taking direction from the same cosmic voices – shaping the transmissions into something both modern and timeless – something wholly his own.

This is an epic if there ever was one. Shadowy paths lead you out onto the wide open mesa, throw you over deep canyons, and finally submerge you in cleansing rivers. Exotic Believers leaves you sitting next to the warmth of the fire wondering what to make of all this—the existence of this world, having grown into what it is without your permission or even your agreement.

The record is over. What are you going to do now?

Image courtesy of Ghost to FalcoSpace.

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