Japan’s Ghost have always seemed more like an arcane religious sect than a traditional band. In the 1980s, they avoided traditional rock clubs, performing instead in fields, ruins, woods, caves, and temples. Since they sidled into Western consciousness via their self-titled debut album on Hideo Ikeezumi’s P.S.F. label in 1990, Ghost have built a discography rife with solemn psychedelia, opiated folk rock, and confounding improv.
Newly reissued by Drag City, their first three albums—the self-titled debut LP, 1992’s Second Time Around, and the 1994 live document Temple Stone, all originally recorded for P.S.F.—capture the group at its purest and most mysterious, like a Japanese analogue of Popol Vuh. In a 2004 interview, lead singer/guitarist/banjoist Masaki Batoh observed that Ghost’s creativity stems from unknowable origins: “Music falls from highest sphere. We don't make music. It's born naturally.”
Ghost was my gateway into the splendors of Japanese psychedelia. The image on the cover captures the enigmatic pastoral air permeating the album: Batoh—long-haired, rail-thin, and behatted— and the rest of the band pose on a grassy, mist-shrouded hill before massive speakers, ancient sculptures, or perhaps both. Opening track “Sun Is Tangging” begins with a triangle tap and shaken shells before a horrifying scream and rumbling drums puncture the calm. This enlightening kick in the ear eventually gives way to a languid folkadelic sway, with Batoh cooing inscrutable lyrics (“Sea Mous melt and sleep/While my evil eye’s closed/Think about your rough land/All the bitch and milk snow, pun is dry”). His cyclical acoustic guitar riff, Noriaki Hagiya’s mournful oboe, and Mu Krsna’s conga slaps cohere into a hypnotic fantasia. Batoh proves an inelegant crooner who often sounds tipsy, his accented English hard to decipher, but that only adds to Ghost’s charm.
Ghost’s salubrious infatuation with Can surfaces in “Guru in the Echo,” whose chunky, Jaki Liebezeit-esque tom-tom tattoos lead into a grandiloquent strain of garage rock bearing traces of the Hombres’ “Let It Out (Let It All Hang Out).” Hearing Ghost bust out of their dominant restrained mode is exhilarating. The three songs bearing “Moungod” in their titles carry a whiff of ominous ritual—replete with monk-ish chants and rickety hand percussion—and reveal Ghost’s kinship with nomadic improv ensemble Taj-Mahal Travellers.
But the real meat of Ghost resides in the ballads—which distinguished the band from most of their P.S.F. comrades, who favored overwhelmingly distorted power chords and swift tempos. The wispy “I’ve Been Flying,” a song of gentle escapism, floats on Batoh’s acoustic guitar and featherlight vocals reminiscent of Nick Drake. One of Ghost’s most moving and inventive songs, “Ballad of Summer Rounder” balances between elegance and shambles until the drums and bass propel the piece into a defiant work of empowerment. After a poignant, fragile flute solo by Taishi Takizawa, the track morphs into a chaotic, Faust-ian rock entanglement. On the lacily beautiful “Rakshu,” the mood is gloriously devotional; Hagiya’s valedictory oboe part sends the listener to the exit feeling shaken to the core.
Ghost expanded their timbral palette on Second Time Around, adding Celtic harp, lute, vibraphone, and bouzouki to the group’s arsenal. The predominant style is folk rock that yearns for a mythical, unspoiled past, but without the baggage of sentimentality. On the title track, Ghost locate the golden mean between starkly menacing and triumphantly majestic, while the band makes intimacy sound vast on “A Day of the Stoned Sky in the Union Zoo,” where Ogino’s heroic recorder solo moves with plumed-serpent aplomb. “Awake From a Muddle” is a dramatic, flute-powered ballad with obliquely beautiful acoustic plucking. As often happens with Ghost in this era, the song revs into a higher gear and ascends the mountain with puffed-out chest. On mantric rocker “Orange Sunshine,” Ghost, flaring into prog-rock pugnacity, achieve the rare feat of making acoustic guitars sound heavy and ominous. Second Time Around peaks on “Forthcoming From the Inside.” After a trance-inducing acoustic guitar and flute intro, the track jump-cuts to an urgent rhythmic thrust, thanks to Iwao Yamazaki’s vigorous tom bumps; think Can’s “Vitamin C,” but not as funky. One wishes that Ghost ventured into this hard rhythmic-attack mode more often, as it contrasts nicely with their folkier inclinations.
Temple Stone contains spiritualized iterations of songs from Ghost’s first two LPs, recorded in the Seiryu Temple and Waseda Salvation Church. The production is remarkably vivid, given where the recordings were made. The songs vibrate with more intensity than in their album versions, as if performing in sacred zones had elevated the members’ chops. The traditional “Blood Red River” is a revelation, its fractured blues and noisy free-jazz explosions evoking a wracked combo of Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds and the Red Crayola’s free-form freakouts. A lot of live records come off as redundant, but Temple Stone renders Ghost’s early, magisterial material in boldfaced italics.
Following Temple Stone, Ghost transformed into a slightly more conventional rock group (they even did a Rolling Stones cover), adding White Heaven guitarist Michio Kurihara and developing a facility for prog rock and more overtly political stances, as exemplified by song titles such as “Change the World” and “Tune In, Turn On, Free Tibet.” Collaborations with Magic Hour and Damon & Naomi showed that Ghost could adapt to blown-out and hushed Western indie-rock protocols, respectively. But as interesting as those excursions are, Ghost created their most distinctive and enduring music on these first three albums.
