When considering writing a piece about loss, Amsterdam-based musician Asa Horvitz was searching for something more than just the right words. The singer, multi-instrumentalist and composer’s father passed away in 2017, with the death of other close relatives coming close before and after. Horvitz wanted a musical language to evoke our metaphysical and tangible experiences with loss. The artist and a team of friends assembled a dataset of over 150 texts from throughout history that dealt with grief and fed them through a custom Natural Language Processing AI system. Inspired by the cryptic text that resulted, Horvitz formed an ensemble to create a singular, emotionally unguarded music-theater piece called GHOST. Part experimental opera, part neo-Medieval reverie, and part avant-pop song cycle, it is presented here as an album of standout recordings made throughout the project’s long genesis.

GHOST’s varied compositions resulted from vocal improvisations led by Horvitz and bassist and singer-songwriter Carmen Quill, and accompanied by Ariadne Randall and Bryan West (processing, synths, viola da gamba, and more). Later, Horvitz’s uncle—esteemed pianist and composer Wayne Horvitz—interpolated additional instrumental passages. Recalling (at turns) Robert Ashley’s spoken-word operas, Arthur Russell’s vaporous pop song, and the undulations and intonations of Einstein on the Beach, the music functions like a cosmic reaching-out—soulful despite its partially systematized means of production. Horvitz and ensemble theorize about the roots of our shared sadnesses by siphoning through what history has left behind for us to examine. GHOST derives its strength from its empathetic perspective, tracking the tidal patterns that underpin our grief without attempting to fabricate their logic.

– Winston Cook Wilson

https://celestialexcursionsghost.bandcamp.com/album/ghost

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Will Stratton was born in Woodland, California in 1987, spent his formative years all over the greater Pacific Northwest and mid-Atlantic United States, and has lived and worked in the Hudson Valley town of Beacon, New York for the better part of the last decade. His next album will be out in 2025. His previous two albums, 2021’s The Changing Wilderness and 2017’s Rosewood Almanac attracted positive recognition from the likes of Elton John, Alexis Petridis at The Guardian, Tom Doyle at Mojo, and Saby Reyes-Kulkarni at Pitchfork.

https://willstratton.com/

Supported by the Austrian Federal Ministry of Arts, Culture, the Civil Service and Sports

GHOST (Asa Horvitz + Carmen Quill + Ariadne Randall + Wayne Horvitz) / Will Stratton

GHOST (Asa Horvitz + Carmen Quill + Ariadne Randall + Wayne Horvitz) / Will Stratton