Ghost on TV is the new recording project from Boston-based multi-instrumentalist, songwriter, and producer Paul DePasquale. A new album `Mister Silence` is released to the world this month and is all about “growing older, being a bit wiser, reminiscing and learning from your past, staying true to oneself, taking liberties, while not being so damn aggressive about anything,” DePasquale says. “We live in a world where most people will wear emotions or show everything up front, looking for validation, and sometimes it is best to just be calm, quiet, thoughtful, and reflective. Be silent until it makes sense not to be.”
The album opens with `Beckon` and it’s a fairly quietly shared observational piece over a background of shimmering guitar riffs and a beating heart of a drum. I read that `Drained` casts a look outward at the stresses and tensions we grapple with simply to get by and how those around us, as well as oppressive forces, conspire to keep us trapped in the Sisyphean game of life. It has a captivating rolling percussive beat, a guiding bass line with some skewered riffs and vocals that sound as if they are shared remotely.
`Daily Laws` is all about the art of negotiating with ourselves and fuelled by a bassline from a SG bass picked up in Tokyo. It has a Trip-hop vibe which at the same time, for me gave it a bit of a funky jazz like ambience. There`s a stop start almost jaggedness to `Pictures Of Us` with a kind of spoken word stream of consciousness drifting atop. I`m led to believe that it`s possibly the closest sonic composition to the singer`s past life in alternative rock band Vary Lumar.
`Crashonomics` finds the musician exploring glitched-out hip-hop bars on this rapped composition which seemed to me to fall between De La Soul and House of Pain. We enjoy a delightful reflectiveness on `Turn It Back Around` which has some rhythmic bass riffs, a tapped drum rim and ruminative keys allowing the vocals free reign.
The album closes out with title track `Mister Silence` which has vocals that are kind of laid back almost supressed, a final rolling trippy hip-hop submission that is fairly compelling and engaging.
Paul DePasquale has shared that “The name Ghost On TV came from the idea that artists and their art live forever for us to enjoy for as long as we like,” he posits. “I find it pretty cool that I can be inspired by someone who is no longer of the living.” This goes some way to explaining this release. It`s a kind of relaxed serene blend of alternative, indie, trip-hop, and electronic music which at times is wonderfully hypnotic and absorbing.
It`s a pretty intense listen in the respect that it seeps slowly into your soul the more you listen to it and provokes some inner reflection on your own existence and possible mortality.
Rating 8.5/10
