My Review
Ghostland - Dances on Walls
Lost souls are individuals who cannot live with themselves, in an ordeal that does not end up in the history books. They can be bound to life by a form of survival with a sad look, engines without gasoline that leave the legs of enthusiasm perpetually still.
If all this happens in a country in which obvious poverty is added, then it is an exception that stands out.
Then there are guys who should always have petrol in their tank.
Greece is phenomenal: it stays afloat with its souls bare but able to resist the passage of time, a cultural cradle that knows no surrender.
And the young Greek generation is very combative, in the art of music there are many bands that are looking for fuel and can offer beautiful journeys with their works.
Take for example Ghostland.
Makrina: vocals, Nikos: bass, Argyris: guitar, programmed drums & synths.
Three guys (they become four live thanks to the contribution of their sound engineer Stavros who plays keyboards) capable of writing songs like fans to bring the warmth of their peninsula to the northern lands.
Because in sadness, in desolation, there is always the assumption of a point of contact with the cold.
Their Post-punk attitude does not mean that their musical genre is just that: swimming in the possibilities of contact with the most rarefied Darkwave and minimal electronic incursions, the three create a delicate scenario without renouncing to power, but it is undoubtedly their amazing ability to arrive on tiptoe that conquers, charms, establishes the perfect presupposition to love them unconditionally.
Of their nation they have the ability to be mysterious, never fully showing all their treasure chests. They write songs like a half mirror, enough for upsets of absolute pleasure. You can sense the other half: their skill lies in not exaggerating, in their remarkable sense of balance, in their ability to suggest that what is missing is not a weakness but a strength.
Their music is dark, it moves through the space of the souls I mentioned, and it does so with the courage of those who see more light in the night than during the day. This can be deduced by the ease of the music and words that travel intrepid, bold, upside down, with their eyes open and their dreams dropped on one of the thousands of islands of a Greece increasingly in need of talents like theirs.
While they are working on their second album, here my writing is directed to their debut record of four years ago, which I well remember gave me deep reflections, emotions and the most intense joy for a work able to show their courage, the propensity for attention to detail, the richness conveyed by talent and perfect planning.
Incisive, aggressive with gentleness, they are splendid martens who have on their fur all the softness that allows them to soar.
If you listen to these tracks carefully, it won't be difficult to notice the characteristic ability to dilate the notes with vibrations and a sense of anticipation that creates pathos.
The guitars are shy sirens, the bass a leaping and elegant badger, keyboards are waves that enter the marine background and the voice a gazelle that runs even when it walks...
Dances on Walls is the human library that continues to write the history of its land: let's dive into these nine pins and discover the elegance of a band that chews the night with lightness…
Song by Song
Dances on Walls
The Greek past enters in the album's brief introduction: like an expanse of "Draco", meaning dragon, this track is just a marble showing its solidity with powerful notes, keyboards that sound like the wind carrying the flight of bats. Give Philip Glass some LSD and you get this wonder in your ears.
Leave Behind (Hollow Moon)
Take Red Lorry Yellow Lorry in the intro, a handful of Anja Huwe in the vocals and enjoy this post-punk bass and then the hallucinated guitar scratching the darkness. You'll get a sound painting with 40 years on its shoulders, but fresh and effective.
Wind of Knives
The beginning can sound like a perfect cross between Echo & The Bunnymen's All My Colours in the drumming and The Sound of Geopardy in the bass. But Makrina's vocals are enough to have suggestions just out of the water. And then, as the seconds pass, you find yourself enjoying bunches of grapes within increasingly effervescent notes that leave you feeling gloomy. The words remain coated with an almost romantic sadness but effective in making us bow our heads.
Don't Wait
Devo change their skin, pairing up with early Pankow and pushing the pace to get fast. Makrina sews the skin of thoughts with a voice that penetrates and insinuates itself like a snake inside us. Structured with complex simplicity, the song is a melodic howl able to shake.
Sway
How much similarity I see between this song and 3+Dead. But the Greeks were born first.
The Greek band delights us with this atmosphere which, verging on Dreampop, reaches into a delicate, almost serene Darkwave.
The guitar moves secretly, leaving keyboards at the centre of attention for most of the piece.
The Dancing Crowd
The most bony, decisive, heavy track is a philosophical procession of perfectly accurate sounds. An energetic voice emerges from a damp cave to shake the feathers of the night streets and then the chorus is an absolute gothic enchantment. Bass and guitar challenge each other and the arrangement of the second verse brings forth spring tears. The portrayal of all their turbulence is class that enchants.
Ice Song
Greek archipelagos bring loneliness to the Parthenon: Athens is filled with corals and lakes, and with this sharp blade it gets a makeover. Robert Smith's band might be jealous: how skillful they are at not being too sad, but in a measure in which everything leaves margins of freedom in the plundered bones, strength seems a memory.
Lifeblood
No way: these guys have magic in their fingertips, quickly combining German post-punk with shots of glacial sounds, torn clothes, dangling hands, while legs run breathless. In the end the higher register of voice, hidden behind darkwave bushes, shudders, it scares like a short-lived horror movie.
Against The Light
The conclusion is entrusted to the ancient atmosphere that brings us back to the time when a woman could go out only with her handmaiden.
The beginning is heavy dust descending from the clouds: spectral, smelling of death. Then the lashings of a drum machine and the bass like the roar of a lion.
Slow, sacred, a black diamond not to be looked in the eye, the song seems to celebrate a millenary decadence.
And if enchantment can have acceptable blackness, that comes out of the anachronistic grooves of this splendid final song.
Alex Dematteis
Musicshockworld
Salford
25 April 2022
https://ghostland.bandcamp.com/album/dances-on-walls
https://open.spotify.com/album/6t8NIDTuKDaCuYpoifLqe0?si=Xji_UbymQTqrNUFOvqtj5Q
