On Friday, new supergroup Ghost Liotta—featuring members of Death Cab For Cutie, Butch Walker, The National and Tenacious D—released their self-titled LP. The experimental project features James McAlister (The National), Christopher Wray (Butch Walker), Zac Rae (Death Cab For Cutie), and John Spiker (Tenacious D) and revolves around a unique mix of modular synths, live drums, and pedal steel guitar.
Ghost Liotta is a sparse landscape of ambient instrumentation. With a combination of musicians who come from so many different backgrounds, the entire project comes together like trying to combine every color of paint. While that isn’t to say that Ghost Liotta isn’t something original, it is, but it’s hard to believe that a diehard fan of the humorous metal stylings of Tenacious D, the indie rock of The National, or any of these other distinctly unique bands would be interested in something like Ghost Liotta. However, to an outsider who is only vaguely aware of most of these projects, the debut LP is something new and exciting.
“The record was collaborative and creative at every possible stage,” McAlister said. “There was space for us each, in our creative voices, to make big statements. I was constantly surprised at how much of a sonic landscape we covered with so few elements. Each part was deeply considered, but still raw and not overworked.”
One defining feature of the album, as well as the project, is a commitment to live recording and even improvisation, to an extent. All of Ghost Liotta was recorded live at Rae’s The Bank studio, where microphones even picked up the squeaking of chairs. All of the synths on the album, a prominent feature of the recording, were also run through amplifiers in an attempt to add new elements to the sound.
“There are amazing soft synth plugins out there, but we wanted to make something with the tools we love that exist as three dimensional objects in the spaces we occupy,” Wray says. “Not a single sound on the album comes from a plugin.”
Stream the self-titled, debut LP from Ghost Liotta below.
Ghost Liotta – Ghost Liotta