Downpilot
Radio Ghost
When recording for this album began, Downpilot's Paul Hiraga
found himself inspired by a drawing his father had made for him
from memory, of the same mountain that he had drawn many
times as a child while living in a Japanese-American internment
camp in the California/Nevada desert during the war. The result
was the song Day of the Long Sun, which became a touchstone
for the album. This mood inspired him, to go back in time to the small town in California where his father was born and
imagine life on the West coast in another era. As in the songs Rosaline as well as My Paper Sons (a term to describe
Chinese immigrant labourers who forged documents to become citizens after the great earthquake and fire of 1906 in San
Francisco), a tone for the album was set, creating a swirling, hot and dusty backdrop. With tinges of psychedelia, and
Hiraga's dominant melodic sense guiding the trip, the album travels through shadowy and haunting places, and emerges
with hopeful vision and a hard-won freedom. Recorded on vintage analogue gear and presented in two sides in the
tradition of the best classic vinyl, Side One leads off with the title track Radio Ghost, with its lively syncopated
beat and Farfisa organ lending a mysterious and somewhat middle eastern tonality, moving through the slightly sinister
Reno, to the soulful
and cathartic side closer Hallowed Ground. Side Two ventures
into more trippy and cinematic landscapes, culminating in the
slow burn and build of epic album closer Suzanne. Much like artists such as Tame Impala's Kevin Parker and Kurt Vile,
Hiraga records nearly all the instruments himself from real
vintage drums and slide guitars to analogue keys and delivers an album in tradition of Jeff Buckley, Big Star's Alex
Chilton and Gene Clark.
Price
Genre
Format
CD - 1 disk
Release
25-09-2015
Label
Item-nr
479138
EAN
4015698001228
Availability
Not in stock
Tracks
Title
Artist
1
RADIO GHOST
2
RENO
3
DAY OF THE LONG SUN
4
ROSALINE
5
HALLOWED GROUND
6
CHUTES, LADDERS
7
MY PAPER SONS
8
THE COLLECTOR
9
SUZANNE (THE SILENCE)