Recording: Ghostlight

Artist: Ghostlight

Song: The Winter Womb [excerpt]

Recorded at Wavelength Pop Up @ Huntclub Studio (Wavelength 640), February 1, 2015.

Ghostlight - The Winter Womb [excerpt]

It'd been awhile since I saw free-range psych collective Ghostlight in action, so it was a thrill to see them taking on perhaps the most ambitious project I've seen 'em tackle. The Winter Womb was ambiguously billed as "a multi-media performance evoking the darkness of Arctic hysteria evolving into the midnight sun". That turned out to involve streamers and balloons acting as a broken screen for abstract projections, as well as an action painting component. The latter was used not only in the fabrication of CD covers that were distributed to the audience at the show's end, but also as part of the soundworld, with the clank of paint brushes against metal bowls being looped as a percussive element. The piece mostly involved slowly-building ambiance, emerging from the "womb" with a driving krautrock jam before finishing with a version of "I Just Feel Fine" by Ghostlight's alter-ego band Mean Red Spiders. Excellent stuff, and hopefully the band will find an opportunity to re-mount this performance.