Ghosts & Ghouls

So a couple of months back we released our 10^th cd, which is called Ghosts & Ghouls.

Since we have this bloggyspace I figured it would be good to discuss the disc a bit track by track for those who might be foolish enough to be interested.

1.    The Unquiet Grave: This song is an old murder ballad. We re-worked it a lot and must have done close to fifty vocal takes before sealing the deal. We were ultra picky with the vocals on this one. We played around with different voice sounds bouncing some of the vocals out of a mixer into an amp and then putting a microphone on the amp and running it back into our recording deck. Gave the vocals an unearthly sound but was a lot of work.

2.    Ghost Town: This is our tribute to Johnny Cash. The Man in Black wrote great story songs to say the least. My favorite thing on this track production wise is how we managed to ring the tone out of the guitar for the fade out.

3.    Death Comes Creeping: There were a lot of guitar takes with this one and lots of vocal takes. In all this tune has a the most tracks on it on this cd I think. We did a bunch of static tracks that are way off in the background.

4.    The Headbearer’s Song: After Death Comes Creeping we knew we wanted something lite to follow it up. We really don’t buy into the download culture. The song order of our recordings is something we spend a lot of time on and is far from arbitrary. Each bit is meant to flow in a specific order. Anyhow one of the fun things on this track was to run the electric ukulele through an echo pedal so it just loops endlessly around.

5.    Windshield: This one was inspired by untrue events. We were in the Black Hills in a giant fog bank one night but we won’t confess to seeing any spirits. The backing tracks were piles of noise experiments heaped atop each other.

6.    Predator & Prey: As a duo sometimes we want to fill up the space in our tracks with sound. So that can mean looping, running back tracks, etc. Thought it would be fun in this case to let the voice become a reverb explosion that fills the entire song.

7.    Eclipse of Blood: DNA Girl wrote the words to this tale. We figured it would be fun to put some soundscapes behind it and here it is. Our ode to the horror movies we love.

8.    I’m Nuts: DNA Girl wrote the melody and some of the words many moons ago. We decided to go crazy with it and try anything we wanted. We did vocal loops, samples, kazoos, and any other stupid idea that popped into our warped heads.

9.    Monsters are Universal: A tribute to the horror films of yesteryear. We used samples from some of our favs and worked some guitar through it.

10. Therapeutic Spiritualism: Another track based on not so true events. Yes somewhere there is someone who is being followed by a ghost named Joey. We thought about throwing a music bed under this but decided against it because it just didn’t make sense. It’s a skit so we figured let it be a skit.

11. Weird Western: This was the first track we put together for Ghosts & Ghouls. Most of the music is by our musical bud Brian Fowler (Brian is in tons of bands, Echobeast, Spaceseed, and Bibb City Ramblers. He also has an amazing solo mandolin cd out!). I knew after we finished it that this would be the last track. The story has an episodic quality and leaves room for your thoughts to go about the character’s exploits which we figured was a good way to send you on your way.

Here’s the first video for Ghosts & Ghouls. It’s for The Unquiet Grave. We’re hoping to do a video for The Headbearer’s Song in the Spring.

Your scribe, Count Robot.