Tag: loverghost

The Analog Detail of loverghost’s “sweet tooth” Render’s Lends Deeply Vulnerable Love Song a Cozy Intimacy

loverghost, photo courtesy the artists

For the recording and music video for “sweet tooth,” Virginia Beach’s art pop band loverghost undertook meticulous, even granular, execution of production to maximize the analog feel of all elements. Recording partly to a Tascam Portastudio 424 (who that recorded up through the mid-2000s didn’t have one of those and how many wish they had one now?) and a video that includes VHS live footage, hand drawn animation, processing through analog video synthesis (something one most often sees done at a live show) and printing out hundreds of frames through a thermal printer to lend yet another layer of something that seems like it’s coming from another time the whole presentation of the song is incredibly intimate. Which suits its tender sentiments expressing love for someone that doesn’t really get and thus appreciate music which is a bit of a quandary if you’re a musician who these days have to orient part of their navigation of getting the music out toward the attention economy that is partly ruining the purity of creating and experiencing music directly. Musically it resonates with Broken Social Scene’s “Anthems For A Seventeen Year Old Girl” and its own deeply vulnerable energy. The song balances openly confessional affection and acceptance of potential rejection and being willing to risk that heartache if the feelings aren’t mutual. Knowing how much effort went into the final presentation of the song isn’t essential but one can feel the love and care that went into the whole thing listening the song and taking in its fascinating visuals and that makes a major difference in a world where so much music is treated as disposable by culture and for sure by the industry. Watch the video for “sweet tooth” on YouTube and follow loverghost at the links below.

loverghost on Instagram

loverghost on Bandcamp

The Lingering Luminosity of the Melodies of loverghost’s “there was a hole here” is an Audio-Visual Haunting You’ll Want to Revisit

The new single by loverghost “there was a hole here” is as much an abstract downtempo ambient song as existential and enigmatic, science fiction horror short. Maybe best experienced watching it in the dark and taking in its hauntingly beautiful and unusual imagery. The tones are in that saturated lo-fi production style that sounds like it was done on cassette and transferred to digital. Maybe even recorded to VHS like the visuals very well could be and then manipulated into otherworldly dimensions utilizing sources that already have great potential to convey both a tactile and human immediacy of physical space and pure emotional expression. Amid visions of animals in the dark, glitched out faces, silhouettes on a luminous backdrop and slow streaks of melody and incandescent electronic piano we hear a voice seemingly lost in reverie drift in and out of the track and as spectral as the video is you almost want to be in that blissed out emotional space disconnected from the demands of everyday life. Visually it’s reminiscent of the aesthetics of Skinamarink and perhaps even The Outwaters or Beyond the Black Rainbow but altogether it resonates with what acts like Yoga and Peaking Lights at the outer edges of its experimental soundscaping, think the more blurry boundaries of The Stargazer Lilies. But this all sounds purely electronic in its composition and its arrangements seemingly as informed by visual editing processing and techniques as those more musical. Watch the video for “there was a hole here” on YouTube.