Minimalistic guitar music that works as an easy going soundscape for a minimally distracting background that does not require your absolute attention, but it can also satisfy the need for details and perfect construction.
Creating a mesmerizing modality
Eight tracks of solo instrumental spirit charged electric guitar music intended to reflect the contemporary Zeitgeist, where reality and fiction have become increasingly difficult to discern. I love getting lost in the simple basics, just to transmit blessings from God through the heavenly realm, meditations on simple evenly crafted patterns, and hidden melodies. A guitar player crafting perfect patterns made by real fingers on strings, creating the familiar luthier flavored variety of tones and universal drones. The tone is mostly clean or with simple effects like good old reverb, tubular slide beams, maybe some very sparse and subtle double tracking. Lots of natural drone harmonics with a relaxing tempo. Unaccompanied solo electrified guitar with no big science (none of that fancy technology) applied to the signal, not even overdrive, AI, expensive digital processing, or crunchy fried fuzz cakes.
Each song on Phantom Sightings has a different mood and its own feeling with a familiar approach to playing the guitar and how the amplifier is used. I enjoy the sparkling metallic natural flare effects on some harmonics made by the amplified strings. This brings me into the warm hypnotic embrace of droning happiness. Creating a mesmerizing modality, like a haunting and atmospheric soundtrack, lingering somewhere between the real and the imagined living among ghosts. The ghost story is ubiquitous across all cultures from oral folktales to works of literature, I think there are ghosts. Other spirits, psychical energy, something explained by current science, and something supernatural that we just need to study more. Sound is invisible. Something more is happening. The haunting ceases when the skeleton is given a proper reburial, without forbidden occult activities.
A translucent or shadowy breeze ::
The soul and spirit are believed to exist after death, the creature within that animated the body, often as a translucent or shadowy breeze dressed in the attire of the era in which they lived, composed of a misty, airy, or subtle material, perhaps but a shadowy outline, or fuzzy or unsubstantial image, or covered in a shroud and dragging chains; trapped inside the property where their memories and energy are strong, with the ability to assist or harm the living, clairvoyance, and the possibility of a second death. The soul of a dead person would divulge its mission, while a demonic ghost would be banished at the sound of the Holy Name.
Making the attempt to communicate with the living through apparitions, noises, or other paranormal phenomena, such as moving objects or making noises, we can hardly “know” much of anything having to do with the afterlife. I love the sound of the guitar, translucent, ethereal, shadowy patterns, minimalistic and timeless. The feeling can go on for hours, one dreamer with a guitar, I can hear mathematics, harmonics, metre and swing, I imagine music as a vapor, gibbering and whining into the earth, as frightening creatures who could work to either good or evil purposes. So far I have not succeeded in finding a satisfactory recording of the sounds of some form of a ghost or just some kind of spiritual energy. I believe I am a lost spirit left behind and I experience existence as personal impressions in space and time, trying to figure out the next step, and to atone for my personal transgressions in my life. Music is part of this.
“Departure is a word with dual meanings – it can refer to leaving, as is the case for the growing number of people one has crossed in one’s life or have inspired one in some way and who has now passed on. Departure also refers to a starting point from which one embarks on a new journey of hope, discovery, and growth.”
They are heere. “The sky a neon wound” (7:12), begins with a symmetrical procession into the melody and everything is in place. This is my ear’s mathematical drone dream, the symmetry and form of fingers on strings exposing some kind of energy directly from the heart, noodling on the grid. I think I hear some understated subtle multitracking so that there is a woven response to the melody. What are we doing? “Sending out curiosity rays” (7:12), this one sounds like guitars in space, with that simple mathematical perfection, musical craftsmanship for the soul and for those spirit astronauts.
Darkness and the endless void of terror ::
Darkness and the endless void of terror. “Fear is a thief” (6:59), a guitar strumming, creating patterns with weaving melodics, edgy tense and dangerous. The sound of long pieces of metal vibrating, stop-start moments and drone vibrations, ghostly armies and the ghosts of animals other than humans, the guitar is telling a vivid story with vibrations. This could be my favored and familiar natural trance inducer and calming guitar art. You like it darker? “A plaintive moan” (8:15) erupts, sighing slides and trembling vibrato charged ghost vibrations on top of long metal strings, with electronic flares, natural harmonics and buzzy tingling. I like where this is headed. “Little things beginning” (6:15) returns to the forms of finger strings folk style melodics telling dreamy aspirational tales. I hear that it can be our way, spacy hypnotic timeless strummy finger play in a soaring easy slow moment. Nothing fancy. Amply satisfying. Could this next one be a classic old television show theme, “Date with a phantom” (7:48)? I feel the vibrato fingers on strings, the fabulous steel tingling up my spine, the vibrating strings that touch on harmonics at times. This time with a good bit of slide, a blues nod, passing into a floating hall of mirrors out to infinity, with a squeaky vibrato.
This next title burns. “Weeping Jesus in agony” (5:22) has a solemn easy flowing feeling, like fingers on strings, squeaking tragic drones in hypnotic layers and sad dark bluesy solo electric guitar slides a-weeping. Fear not, there is no blasting rhythmic pattern so familiar with the Divine agony and suffering, here tis merely easy space music. The kind with scratching fingers picking dark space, a bluesy flavored cosmic instrumental, the sound of a divine space tragedy. One monster reaches out for us but gets no hold of us.
A hall of mirrors sensation ::
I see this closing track as an homage to John Barleycorn, the misery that comes in hot. That is what my guide spirits tell me. “Eventually every glass is empty” (5:34) introduces some microtonal drones allowing for itchy glitchy bliss, some multilayer woven melodics in a space guitar mode. I hear glass and mirrors, sunny light, sort of sad in the long run, things are nice now but later we shall surely grow more worn. A hall of mirrors sensation looking into infinity, reflected in the glass weaving and growing more or less detailed. All this works as something to focus closely on if you like your fingers on strings, which I do.
Minimalistic guitar music that works as an easy going soundscape for a minimally distracting background that does not require your absolute attention, but it can also satisfy the need for details and perfect construction. A sound bath containing the variance of local magnetic fields, size of location and lighting level stimuli of which many witnesses may not be consciously aware. The sounds of a ‘life energy‘ that could survive death without dissipating.
Phantom Sightings is available on Wormhole World. [Bandcamp]
