Black Swan - Ghost (2024)

Ghost is the ninth studio album by New York-based Black Swan, who employs an arsenal of analog recording devices and methods to blur the line between reality and memory. Inspired by musique concrète, ambient, and dark drone traditions, the twenty pieces in this continuous suite capture the experiences of a spirit navigating the physical world it left behind.

The dimensions of each movement come from careful consideration of the overall narrative: some are brief vignettes, while others are given room to breathe and evolve; some showcase simple but effective means, and others push the limits of their analog formats with intense layering and harmonic surges. Beginning with “Somewhere But Here”, an uncanny tone is established by melodies trilling from dusty, endlessly re-dubbed tapes, and the medium itself emerges as an essential sculptural instrument.

“Like Dust, I Linger” is one of the album’s most heartbreakingly beautiful entries, rising with a tender warble that unfolds beneath a soaring, atomized loop. “Ad Infinitum” follows, with shimmering synths that merge and overlap like sun shafts on a cobalt lake, their harmonies forming a slow, emotional crescendo across its ten minute sprawl. On “Time Loop”, the low end vanishes, and we are untethered into airiness, accompanied by a quietly bustling, tactile clatter.

Regarding his process, Black Swan states, “I used a plethora of different tape stocks, both new and used, giving each track its own color, character, and overall presentation. I wanted Ghost to sound like some unmarked cassette found hidden away in an abandoned attic, and to create the thrill of hearing something sacred for the first time in generations.”

This feeling reaches its unearthly peak during the album’s middle section, as the staccato, aquatic plink of “Parathèque” gives way to a three-act suite awash in crackling fields of tape hiss and long-tail reverberations. “Half Past Three” sacrifices tonality in the service of pure atmosphere, with a cascade of resonant, fibrous textures; “Static Memory I” is possessed by a timestretched voice reaching out from the edge of intelligibility, anchoring the reedy soundscape floating above; and “Beneath The Veil” could have been picked up from an electromagnetic field reader, its ominous drones roiling in purgatory.

The latter half of Ghost contains some of Black Swan’s most adventurous experiments, from the noisy gales and tremolo chimes of “Girl In the Garden”, to the mutilated signal paths of “Spirit Box”. The sonic storms encircling many of these tracks create the album’s defining charisma: it’s impossible to determine the devices and techniques used on a given piece, as they all bear the aura of having been stumbled upon, perhaps in between frequencies on a disused transistor radio. Each one is organic, macabre, and striking in its balance of beauty and eeriness.

“Beyond Hope of Greening” ends the album with an acknowledgement of permanence; that what once was, will never be again. The howl of a decaying reel snakes between channels, while a low rumble and stringlike patchwork hover in the backdrop, leaving the listener in a blissful state of limbo as the final moments fade. Reflecting on his inspirations, the artist recalls “thinking of all kinds of moments that have gone by, and how fast they did so… I personally have a really hard time with letting go, and that is what this album is about.”

RIYL: Belong’s October Language, The Caretaker, Altars Altars, Forest Management, Fluorescent Heights, Geotic, early Tim Hecker, Boards of Canada interludes.