Briana Purser
The Black Angels conjure up some spirits with sophomore album, Directions to See a Ghost
By Katy Henriksen
Published: May 14th, 2008 | 2:00pm
Percussionist and sometimes-bassist Stephanie Bailey occasionally sleeps with the lights on because she’s haunted by ghosts.
From her home in Austin, Bailey confesses a history with supernatural spirits. It began when the house she shared with three of her Black Angels band mates (keyboardist Kyle Hunt, vocalist Alex Maas, bassist Nate Ryan, projectionist Adam Demetri, and lead vocalist-guitarist Christian Bland) was haunted.
That house, Bailey says, was a 1970s porn-styled house in Austin’s ghetto that they moved into in 2005. “It even had a hot tub that was attached to the kitchen,” she exclaims. “Right after we moved in, we would always hear noises at night like someone was walking around barefoot. But after getting the courage up to look around, everyone would be asleep.”
Bailey explained how random instruments like the band’s tambourine would shake when no one was in the band room. After three years, she says, she and Bland, Maas, and former Black Angel organist Jennifer Raines, just got used to these strange occurrences.
When they finally decided to find a new place in mid-2007, it ended up filled with more spooks than the previous home. In the new place, where she currently lives, Bailey says childlike handprints often appear on a mirror in her bedroom and her computer radio turns on randomly. By her account, it appears that they’ve decided to make themselves a permanent part of her day-to-day life.
Supernatural spirits also play an integral part in the band’s sophomore release, the dark and droning Directions to See a Ghost (Light in the Attic).The album’s title refers to a pamphlet from the 1800s of the same name that instructs readers to stare at a picture of a skull with X’s in its eye sockets until one looks away and sees a ghost.
Although not a concept album, Ghost, is structured like one. There’s an instruction manual — of sorts — that lists lyrics with headlines underneath song titles. Opening track “You on the Run,” for instance, has a headline of “man’s flight from the unseen/unsane” and is the story of a person on the run from the FBI since 1981.
Bland sings the lyrics in between long, thrashing, instrumental interludes until the song ends with guitars mimicking and mingling with sitar. It’s a brooding, drum-and-bass–heavy track punctuated by tambourine. Listening to it and the 10 other tracks on Ghost, particularly with headphones on, you get a sense that you’re right up front for one of the Black Angels’ tireless live performances, and that’s exactly how the Black Angels want it.
Bailey says that they recorded Ghost at Cacophony Studios in Austin using the analog process of two-inch–tape recording. Two-inch tape recording forces a certain commitment from artists, as one take is all that’s allowed when the song is transcribed directly to magnetic tape. The result is a recording with a sonic “fatness,” or live-performance quality, that’s comparable to early blues music recordings. This comes through most on Ghost in the echo effects.
Bailey says that the recording space had a lot to do with Ghost’s cavernous sounds. “The studio is built into a cliff off the Colorado River, and has 25-foot ceilings, and a concrete floor. The entire back wall is a huge window,” she says. “The natural sound of the studio is amazing.”
As for the band’s encounter with otherworldly elements and the relationship between these occurrences and the band’s music, Bailey says, “I think our music is definitely influenced by fear and paranoia. That fear can stem from the supernatural, or politics, or issues we have to confront in our daily life.”
She adds, “I consider our new album directions to open your mind. Hopefully it helps you see things that you are constantly told do not exist, which could be anything from a basic idea, a higher power, even a ghost.”
—
The Black Angels' MySpace
Comments
Please login to be able to comment on this article.
more