Ghostigital

It seems that when Einar Örn (former SUGARCUBES and K.U.K.L. front man) enlists another artist to work with him, it’s like collaborating with the Cubists, or the Dadaists in musical form. His partner in this case, with the movement named Ghostigital, is Curver. An Icelandic multi-instrumentalist, Curver’s background is as eclectic as the music he dabbles in: a producer, artist, a remixer (Sigur Ros) , a music teacher. Ghostigital’s Les Demoiselles de Avignon is named In Cod We Trust.

Welcome! You’re really in for a fantastic treat.

For those new to the sonic world of Ghostigital, you should know that there doesn’t seem to be any floor plan to the music, even though there is architecture. It’s best you just relax, release preconception, don’t think or analyze too much. Here’s an idea: let us do the analyzing so the thoughts don’t get in the way of your listening experience. Know the music will come to you the way it wants to; you are not in control.

Often it seems that neither is Einar. His vocal tone evokes the everyday man hung on an everyday line and pushed to extremes, but extremes that for the moment are livable and sometimes amusing. His rap does not spew harsh violence but the cool cosmically comic fright-journalism of breakfast in workaday hell.

Unmistakably Icelandic, their subjects could have multiple national origins – exchange codfish for... well, anything and you get the meaning. In 1940s America, “fish” was slang for the dollar and there, the joke of the album is easily apparent. Whether Einar is commenting on what he sees while standing in line at the grocery store, men who are fixated on fish or seeing the Northern Lights through a headache, his songs are still stories of relationships with average living, a lifestyle that merges the mundane with the sublime.

While the genre-mashing In Cod We Trust pulls the aesthetic rug out from under a listener’s expectations, one should not fear that they are lost in a pop music sea. Ghostigital fashions an aural forest of industrial, Bel Canto, Jazz, Rap, ‘80’s New Wave, and Electronic music– just not necessarily in that order or only at one time.

For this album they recruited: Ipecac Recordings label mates Mugison and Dälek in the USA, as well as Mark E. Smith, Sensational, KatieJane Garside, Steve Beresford, Ása Júníusdóttir and Hrafn Ásgeirsson including Einar’s own son Kaktus playing trumpet.