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SUGAR SKULLS
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In Tibetan Buddhism, a "hungry ghost" refers to someone with an insatiable yearning for information, stimulation and experience; a person who is always searching without rest. In many ways, this is the true of Hungry Ghost, whose iconoclastic post-ambient music reflects its creators' drive for new experiences and truly challenges listeners. Formed in 1994, the group has recently released Sugar Skulls, their first album for Tone Casualties.
While the media has described Hungry Ghost as an ambient/free noise/trance/industrial group, the band shies away from pigeonholing themselves. Hungry Ghost sees the debate over musical genres and trends as absurd -- the group simply thinks theirs is a lovely sound. This philosophy is evidenced by the pseudonyms used by the members of the group: Bhopal, Cactus, Ulbrecht and Miscreant.
The story behind the release and the group is filled with coincidence. Cactus and Miscreant had known each other long before forming the group, but only after beginning work on the clips for Sugar Skulls did they discover that they were both born on the Day of the Dead, November 2, in 1964, within five minutes of each other. (Sugar skulls are ornaments made for smashing during Day of the Dead festivities.)
Hungry Ghost's sound demonstrates the group's penchant for things dark and moody and their approach to recording is unique. Sugar Skulls was recorded live and the sounds and textures were largely improvised, edited and assembled into larger collected works that ultimately makes for a surreal, cinematic listening experience.
Sugar Skulls is an engaging pastiche of sound, blending atmospheric keyboards with an undulating stream of percussion and haunting mutated speech samples. Hungry Ghost has begun working extensively with film, video and computer art as an extension of their musical art. In addition, the group is participating in the new Galivant Media World Wide Web site using their sound and imagery.
The American Music Press described Hungry Ghost's sound as, "the mix of acoustic and electric worlds creates an atmospheric world that is at once lulling and engaging." The group is firmly committed to an open interpretation of the music of Sugar Skulls , a record that is simultaneously meditative, ethnic, urgent and spooky.
Miscreant
Bhopal
Cactus
Ulbrecht
Reviews:"The mix of acoustic and electric worlds creates an atmosphere that is at once lulling and engaging."
American Music Press
"Hungry Ghost is yet another band doing the ambient, hypnotic, instrumental, ethnic thing, but very good to boot! 24 tracks of mind-melting stuff, each under 5 minutes, some without beats, some with strange electronic tribal jams. At times like TECHNO-ANIMAL, TERMINAL CHEESECAKE, or GROTUS on ludes. Each song is very different and original to me, Tin-ear doesn't like it cause he doesn't smoke dope! Great stuff indeed."
MAUZ
ANGRY THOREAUAN
"In certain Tibetan Buddhist texts, "Hungry Ghost" refers to a neurotic personality type characterized by a constant and insatiable yearning for more and more information, stimulation and experience. Indeed, Hungry Ghost's style of iconoclastic post ambient music constantly challenges the discriminating ear. Their sound aptly demonstrates the group's penchant for all thing dark and moody, their sound somewhat reminiscent of O Yuki Conjugate, Shinjuku Thief, Muslimgauze, FSOL and others, and their approach to recording is quite unique. Sugar Skulls was recorded live in their studio, DS2, and the sound textures were largely improvised, edited and then assembled into larger collected works, Ultimately, it makes for a surrealistic and cinematic listening experience. This CD is simultaneously meditative, ethnic, urgent and spooky."
WICKED MYSTIC
"Sugar skulls is one long, strange and unconventional record. As far as genre-placement goes, the album gravitates between the spheres of world and ambient, being too ethnically exotic or organically textured to fit within the parameters of the standard knob-noodling electronica produced in the U.K. and U.S. Instead, Sugar Skulls is like a transcendental hippie jam stuck on repeat, processed through some portentous synth machines and then replayed in someone's nightmarish mind's eye. Tablas, dumbeks, sitars and other assorted and implacable ethnic and mystical acoustic sounds line the record's floor like colorful debris, adding dark, suggestive ornamentation to subtle loops of rhythm and curious sound collages. As the album's haunting, near ritualistic demeanor indicates, the mood of Hungry Ghost's compositions is far from accidental: the band's name is a phrase taken from Tibetan Buddhist texts. While the album's title refers to ornaments used during annual Day Of The Dead festivities. Considering this kind of reference point. Sugar Skulls becomes much more that a creepy trance/zone-out piece - it's the soundtrack for some deep, spectral experience, in which time, place and being lose themselves to the drone and pulse of the spirits. Its 24 tracks and 70 minutes offer limitless choices for creative programmers looking to elevate a listener's sub-conscious."
CMJ MONTHLY
"Jackpot"
"On their fist full-length album, Brownout at the Spectacle, San Francisco quartet Hungry Ghost created trace-like music out of primal and African percussion, fragments of human speech, and dark, atmospheric keyboards. But things get even more complex and experimental on this, their second collection, as the band sets those same elements in more loose, less rhythmic songs. "Transmutation" hauntingly blurs echoed speech amid soft drumming and wavy keyboards, while "Malign" opts for tribal drumming with only hint of textual keys. But even with so many elements at work, the album comes together like an intricately woven rug of may colors. And while their sound is till atmospheric and ambient (and impressive, and engaging), Sugar Skulls has Hungry Ghost adding an experimental edge to their chill out vibes; if Brownout had you wanting to read poetry, Sugar Skulls will have you writing some of your own."
OPTION
NEW AGE VOICE - OCTOBER 1997 by JJ
Hungry Ghost's The Man Ray Sessions is one of the newest additions to Tone Casualties' impressive catalog of experimental dark ambient electronics. With neither melody nor percussion, the minimal music on this CD penetrates the subconscious and hypnotizes the listener. Most of the pieces employ a slowly pulsing wall of musical to half-musical tones which fluctuate between a higher and a lower pitch. In some cases the high notes prevail, collapsing into the low. In others, the low drones dominate with mid-level notes laid over the top. Samples and sounds of unknowable origin are woven into the pulsing fabric of the edits. The effect is to create mesmerizing, stark soundscapes. I feel as if I am in a surreal color-muted landscape in which people are gone but their machines and crumbling bauhaus architecture stand as witnesses to their folly. The loss is not through decay, but through calamity. The atmosphere is not good or evil, just cold and desolate. I find this album strangely calming, a compelling listen for the musically adventurous. For those who enjoyed any of the Drones releases on Asphodel, or Stalker by Rich and Lustmord, this is a must-have. I like the whole CD, but programmers may want to start with "Heavy Planet", "Command Structures" or "The Man Ray Sessions".
