So This Is Goodbye

Today, January 1st 2016, marks the final blog post from Ghost FM. We can’t thank our readers enough and we had a terrific time dancing about architecture and introducing you to underrated and seldom heard talents.

This is however, anything but sad news for us. It gives us space to devise other interesting plans with more focus. We are currently busy prototyping, drawing mind maps, taking notes on very specific objects, and doing an awful lot of reading to come up with our next, well, thing. We have already contacted some of you and asked your opinions. 

You can still reach us via Twitter (a new username is tentative) and Spotify and we will most probably make our Instagram private and give it a different direction. However, the dialog will not perish if you exist on twittersphere.

In case the domain becomes unavailable, kindly navigate to gxhxoxsxtxfxm dot tumblr dot com. We will keep the blog up as long as we can. Also obviously we can no longer accept submissions via our contact email. If you have been a blogged or favorite musician here, chances are we are still stalking you. That must be a good thing in a very 1984-y manner of speaking.

As for the “we” you have been confused with throughout the blog, there is actually no we! It has been me, a guy called Pedram and I am a software engineer under daylight. I code a lot. I love my job. I also like winter, watermelon, writing and Sushi among other useful distractions. Despite the relatively wide range of artists I have blogged about here as well as my previous blog This Winki’s (2006-2010), I realize that I have listened a lot to a band called Interpol! Where did that come from?

Thank you so much for sticking with me. Keep listening to a lot of music and if you dig something dope, let me and folks you care about know! Or don’t! That is cool, too.

Yours sincerely,

Ghost FM

    TOP 10 FAVORITE ALBUMS OF 2015• Susanne Sundfør Ten Love Songs • ​D'Angelo and The Vanguard Black Messiah * • ​Disasterpeace It Follows OST • ​Paranoid London Paranoid London • ​Prurient Frozen Niagara Falls • ​Makeup and Vanity Set Wilderness •...

    TOP 10 FAVORITE ALBUMS OF 2015

    1. Susanne Sundfør Ten Love Songs
    2. ​D'Angelo and The Vanguard Black Messiah *
    3. ​Disasterpeace It Follows OST
    4. ​Paranoid London Paranoid London
    5. ​Prurient Frozen Niagara Falls
    6. ​Makeup and Vanity Set Wilderness
    7. ​Blanck Mass Dumb Flesh
    8. HEALTH DEATH MAGIC
    9. ​Eartheater RIP Chrysalis
    10. Jam City Dream A Garden

    * D’Angelo and the Vanguard’s Black Messiah was released in December 2014. Due to the late release date however, it has to be found here.

      TOP 10 FAVORITE SONGS OF 2015• Susanne Sundfør “Fade Away” • D'Angelo and The Vanguard “1000 Deaths” * • Sufjan Stevens “Should Have Known Better” • Tame Impala “Let It Happen” • Sans Parade “Hyperborea” • Big Black Delta “It’s OK” • Kendrick Lamar...

      TOP 10 FAVORITE SONGS OF 2015

      1. Susanne Sundfør “Fade Away”
      2. D'Angelo and The Vanguard “1000 Deaths” *
      3. Sufjan Stevens “Should Have Known Better”
      4. Tame Impala “Let It Happen”
      5. Sans Parade “Hyperborea”
      6. Big Black Delta “It’s OK”
      7. Kendrick Lamar “King Kunta”
      8. Jamie xx ft. Romy “Loud Places”
      9. Blanck Mass “Dead Format”
      10. Black Zone Myth Chant “He Evil”

      * D’Angelo and the Vanguard’s Black Messiah was released in December 2014. Due to the late release date however, it has to be found here.

        ORTHODOX POPThe ubiquitous threat of highly-calculated marketing campaigns in form of songs is taking its toll. The music sphere, despite the existence of some overlooked leftovers and true souls seeking eager ears, is being wholly swallowed by a...

        ORTHODOX POP

        The ubiquitous threat of highly-calculated marketing campaigns in form of songs is taking its toll. The music sphere, despite the existence of some overlooked leftovers and true souls seeking eager ears, is being wholly swallowed by a totalitarian and monstrous organization that is taking pop to new lows dragging the intellect down to zero Kelvin and ferociously spending time and money on the cause. The peril of a flat politically correct and therefore shamelessly bland abundance of tunes populating what once meant to be a global village of diversity is reaching the boiling point. 

        Popular music has always walked on a predictive and psychologically-analyzed pavement but it had never reached the level of profanity we see today. Is that what our parents told us when we first played Radiohead in our bedrooms? Is it the same case as when the neighbors frowned at us when we first wore Marilyn Manson shirts, painted our faces and called ourselves mechanical animals and stars in the dope show? It is sad to see how extremity has transformed from a freak of culture and food for progress to a silent, tame and seldom-seen lone wolf. Is it not the time we, once again, became biased, intellectually aggressive and extreme? Is it not dangerous and Big-Brother-y enough how safe we have chosen to participate? Or is it just approaching the mid-life crisis for us? Just a matter of grumpiness and soon to get used to the new standards and norms. Standards of crowning Normcore as a way of life, the new mask of communism, the state of failure and the demise of creativity.

        We are not buying into this pile of excrement just yet. It is however, the extent of powers that be, that is, at a leisurely pace, wearing us down and sucking our brains. We are losing grip of our small group of like-minded folks and getting distant from the core of events. We have a conspiracy theorist feeling that it is all being thought of, diagramed, blue-printed and implemented in a dark think tank somewhere in a high-rise penthouse.

        (Photo Source: Tribune)

          SOVIET POPIt’s that time of year again where every Moses, Dick and Dominican gets wet dreams from vain pretensions and shares his end-year lists. Some follow the herd and some feel special and burp names even they had not heard an hour ago. Lists...

          SOVIET POP

          It’s that time of year again where every Moses, Dick and Dominican gets wet dreams from vain pretensions and shares his end-year lists. Some follow the herd and some feel special and burp names even they had not heard an hour ago. Lists have become circuses of their own, so why not just jump on the bandwagon there? Well, to see us making asses of ourselves takes a little time as we are waiting until it all drains out. As of mid-December 2014, D'Angelo embarrassingly tricked us. Fool'ma'kant'get'foold'again we suppose. And honestly, we are driving on a fun and mellow curve here, so let us just be!

          Last night we posted about Hot & Cold and boasted about our canto-psych analog noise waves. Tonight and hereby we would like to accentuate that affection by extending a memory that has stifled for four years. It’s the fuzzy uber-experimentalism of Beijing’s Soviet Pop. After their debut Dialogue, they made a 4-track EP titled Suweiai Bopu and then the duo became silent (if they are not masters of disguise and playing with us). Goaty Tapes, from whence you can still purchase Dialogue described their formula as “drum patterns stick to four-four at mid-tempo, vocals maintain an unexpressive monologue [and] melodies rest on two or three notes”. We are dealing with ghosts again. They move in mysterious and occasionally RNG-like, if not oscillating, patterns and provoke a claustrophobic machine-operator environment towards an unsympathetic eroticism. Beware there there!

          Dialogue, is still available on this industrial twosome’s Bandcamp page and you can play its A-side below (”A1: Sound of Capital”, “A2: Deutsch Song”, “A3: Sound of Pulse” and “A4: Test/Debug”). It is entirely recorded on a Sony domestic reel-to-reel on 19cm/sec speed if it helps you get through the cold. It is now safe to go back to prioritizing Jamie XX over Kendrick or vice versa on your favorite list-maker app.

          (Photo Source: Jeremy O’Sullivan)

            UIGHUR POPHaving a sweet and insatiable alienation towards any kind of balloon-provoking music coming from Japan or having something to do with it, it is rather unfair that Japan usually gets the better pie piece of attention. Yet China, in a world...

            UIGHUR POP

            Having a sweet and insatiable alienation towards any kind of balloon-provoking music coming from Japan or having something to do with it, it is rather unfair that Japan usually gets the better pie piece of attention. Yet China, in a world almost devoured by its politicians, gets a very small share. Hearing a few admiring voices here and there makes us feel there is a freakish and extraordinary river of talents running under the asphalt in Beijing, Guangzhou or Taipei, let alone Shanghai which pretty much has its own universe.

            Following the now-half-erased footsteps of one of our own favorite discoveries on this blog, The Offset: Spectacles, has led us to another canto-psych band called Hot & Cold. They are definitely going nowhere chart-topping with that title (because Google! And we doubt if they are ever intending to grow a corporate identity from their music), but a similar and captivating scent of lo-fi/analog noise with Dirty Beaches inclinations (or perhaps the other way around) is easily identified. Hot & Cold’s latest album Border Area dates back to 2012 and is credited to Yang Fan and Cheuk Ki Tom Ng and recorded in Beijing.

            “Uighur Pop” was, back in the days, handpicked and promoted by the band’s record label Rose Mansion Analog who also happened to accommodate The Offsets and Dirty Beaches.

            (Photo source: Jeremy O'Sullivan)