Maturing like a fine wine, five years after their epic dance anthem debut, The Black Ghosts are back with follow-up album, ‘When Animals Stare’, an outstanding amalgamation of champion like tunes.
Check out The Black Ghosts’ exclusive sampler for the soundtrack to your weekend here.
Combining pitch perfect vocals with mind altering sketched out beats The Black Ghosts possess the knowledge and the strength to orchestrate the perfect floor-filler. Manipulating synth, reverb, bass and instrumentals with the kind of finesse that appears only rarely, Theo Keating and Simon William Lord are the godfathers of perverse pop. Working harmoniously, synching sounds and throwing down serious anthems, the duo do what they do coz no one-else can. Counting their fans amongst the most critical of tastemakers and DJ’s The Black Ghosts are the industry’s best kept secret. Eerily hypnotic, frightfully good and scarily talented these two London lads have been hard at graft co-producing, writing and recording the second installment to their newfound glory packed twelve tracker. ‘When Animals Stare’ experiments more with samples, instruments and tempos while lyrics heavily reference occult themed imagery and rhythms are based on rituals. i-D Online gathered some garlic, grabbed a steak and headed down to scare the heebeegeebees out of ourselves at the ghost’s holy grounds.
How’s it goin? The going’s good, it’s my birthday and the sun is shining.
Where are you right now? I’m in New Cross, moved here at the beginning of the year after a long stint in Hackney.
What are your plans for the weekend? I’m doing an acoustic show on Saturday evening and then onto Brixton Academy where Theo is unveiling his Fake Blood live show. Then on Sunday it’s my niece’s first birthday.
What is the standout track from ‘When Animals Stare’? One we’re really proud of is ‘Water Will Find A Way’, it was one of those that came together really smoothly and instantly stuck its head up and gave us a wink.
Where did the album name come from? It was something my girlfriend at the time came out with and I instantly thought it was a great name for a record. It harks back to the titles of old Italian horror movies, called things like ‘Four Grey Flies On Velvet’ and ‘Don’t Torture a Duckling’. I also really like the strange feeling people get when being stared down by an animal, it’s like the animal knows something.
Where are your favourite venues or gigs to play? I like doing acoustic shows at the Gladstone in Borough, they have a room where you can perform without any amplification, it’s a great way of testing out songs. For a night out I like Plastic People. Though since moving to New Cross I’m saving up courage to go to The Venue, they have tribute bands and half price drinks for nurses, awesome…but seriously the queue outside is enough to put you off the suburbs for life.
Who were the creative team you collaborated with to work on the new album? We did everything ourselves this time, with a little help from Southern Fried. It was important to us for it to have a DIY feel and maximum character rather than a clean, polished production. We’re lucky in that we can cover all the music production ourselves and Theo is an amazing graffiti artist so it made sense to do the art as well.
How has the music world changed since you released the first album in 2008? The Internet has continued to shake things up, Myspace has died which was massive when we started. The worst thing that has happened is all pop music turning into rubbish trance…can’t wait until that’s over.
Check out The Black Ghosts’ exclusive sampler for the soundtrack to your weekend here.
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