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We Have A Ghost

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Some people are just made for Halloween, and We Have A Ghost is one of those people. He launched his debut self-titled album online for Halloween last year, and waited until this Halloween to finally give it a physical release (the lauch party took place, unsurprisingly, in a mortuary – a good six other albums are either in production or already up on his Soundcloud). He only ever appears in a customised jacket with an inbuilt face-obscuring mask, making him appear creepily redolent of Paddy Considine’s revenge-seeker in Dead Man’s Shoes, and is obsessed with spectres and hauntings.

We’re not just talking about ghosts in the gnashing and wailing sense though. He recognises that humans are troubled by much more than mere spirits, which he told Alteria Motives is how he got his name: “I realized I was haunted by the notion I was capable of doing more with my life. WE HAVE A GHOST represents anything haunting you. I believe it’s a universal truth – we are all haunted by something”. The dead relative you never got the chance to say goodbye to, the girl you saw weeping but never asked if she was OK, last night’s dodgy kebab…you can put anything that troubles you into thoughtful, electronic pieces like ‘Meadow’ or ‘It Is What It Is’ and let them dwell there, floating in the ether.

Not that all his tracks are low key though. ‘The Secret’ employs rumbling snare rolls and cymbal crashes over a simple but effective piano motif, topping it off with a squalling synth solo, while ‘Computerrok’ drags the horror through the disco doors and butchers it on the dancefloor. However, like Holy Other, Balam Acab and other camera-shy bedroom artists, the tricky question is how his music can be transformed into a live environment without compromising his anonymity. While he hasn’t figured that out completely yet, there’s one element he has decided on: “I would like to incorporate certain traditions from the Ghost Festivals – like reserving the front row for ancestors and the audiences departed loved ones”. For some, the Day of the Dead lasts all year long…

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Steel Trees

Steel Trees
Sheffield, Steel City. Although you wouldn't necessarily have known it at this year's Tramlines festival, where there was relatively little metal, noise, punk or hard rock on offer across an otherwise fantastic event, something that extends across most non-genre-specific festivals. Take Glastonbury: pretty much every musical style is covered, but hardly anything that involves amps cranked up to eleven. Or even ten. The fact that Radio 1 is currently promoting a "celebration" of rock music rather than simply celebrating it occasionally the rest of the year shows how niche heavier music has become, especially when you consider that this week-long event mainly consists of Fearne fucking Cotton introducing bands like Biffy fucking Clyro (creators of this atrocity among others). Fortunately this doesn't put off bands like Steel Trees. Formed in a grim-sounding former pit village called Goldthorpe, they've crafted a sound that incorporates the tastiest cuts of stoner rock, grunge and metal. Previously known as Airburst, whose high-point came supporting Dinosaur Jr. ("we got a lot of responses saying we were better to watch"), their new incarnation relishes in combining the catchier, QOTSA-style side of stoner rock with the less heroin-soaked elements of grunge. Their recently released debut album "Attack of the Stoner Zombie Killer Kids!" is the sound of three guys in deep lust with making enthusiastic noise and not giving a flying Fearne about prevalent musical fashions. Or indeed fashion at all. Asked what distinguishes them from most other bands gets the following response: "We don't have endless lists of music industry contacts and we're not Jimmy Page's nephews on his stepdad's side, We DON'T wear top branded 'in' clothes and we're pretty darn ugly...we're not your average student band with nice happy families feeding our mkat habits and pumping money into us. We're the outcasts, the stoned, the mad and the ugly". If that doesn't make you want to listen to them, what will? Well, maybe the brilliant video below, featuring some unfortunate smalltown boys (and Batman) being beaten up by local tracksuit-wearing twats? Maybe that the frantic "Wreck(ed)" is the best update of 'Bleach'-era Nirvana in years? Maybe the way "What I Tell You" lurches from grizzled, gothed-up grunge to frenetic, screaming choruses without skipping a beat? Maybe the simple fact they have a song called "Awesome Welles"? As they rattle through the album like a fat child steaming its way through a box of fun-size Mars bars, your fist starts involuntarily clenching, then punching the air of its own accord. This, my friends, is why heavy music should be celebrated more than once a year.
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