1. Warning
2. Margins
3. I’m Control
4. Under the Willows
5. For the Crows
6. Torch Song
Ghost Box is the debut release by The Raudive, a band named after the scientist Konstantin Raudive, a Latvian writer and intellectual with a particular fascination with parapsychology. His “Ghost Box” was based on an idea that by recording dead air, or the white noise emenating from an ill-tuned radio, you could pick up the voices of the dead. Raudive himself was convinced that he was hearing them, “speaking five or six languages at a time”.
The band were brought together just over a year ago on a similar pairing of indie-rock and science and since conception they have been building on their craft ever since. Their sheer aural size belittles the idea that a three-piece need sound anything less than powerful. Live and on record, bright swells of guitars collide and subsist to create an effect that it is both abrasive, angular and, at times, beautiful.
Drawing influence from the lo-fi indie-rock of Sebadoh and Sonic Youth, as well as a healthy regard for 80’s luminaries such as Mission Of Burma and The Replacements, there is a raw honesty in the songs here that is both charming and, in its darkness, unnerving. From the chiming warmth around “Margins”’ chorus to the emotionally charged “Torch Song”, there is a well-worn intensity that carries itself throughout.
With scraps of melody married to fragmented lyrics, Ghost Box is a record that burns slowly and grandly. As a debut, this is as promising a pitch-black statement of intent as any.
For more details please contact James Parrish at james@prescriptionpr.co.uk – www.prescriptionpr.co.uk
