Paris conglomerate Ghost Rhythms returns with Missing Times, the band’s ninth album of uncategorizable instrumental music. Led, as always by drummer/guitarist Xavier Gélard and keyboardist Camille Petit, the multi-pronged ensemble still anchors itself in jazz and progressive rock, but folds in folk, classical, French chanson, and anything else that feels right for the songs – a modus operandi that serves them well no matter what the album’s theme.
In this case, the thread is what you might expect from the title: UFOs. (“Missing time” is what alleged abductees often claim to have experienced when they seem to have forgotten several hours of the day.) But this isn’t a science fiction horror or adventure story – Gélard and Petit instead focus on the humans who (again, allegedly) suffer from these encounters. That gives the pieces a warmth that one might not expect from tunes dedicated to the subject. Check out “Aux grands absents” (“Those Who Are Absent”), which begins with a lush steadiness, letting the weight of those missing sink in, before the keys, accordion, guitar, and choir build up to a frenzy of grief. Or “Où étiz-vous?” (“Where Were You?”), where thick bass and busy soprano sax and squeezebox set a note somewhere between frisky and foreboding, before violin joins the latter pair for some tight harmony riffing.The heart of the record’s vision lies in “Ve de Betty et Barney Hill” (“The Life of Betty and Barney Hill”), a story tragic enough to earn actual lyrics. Gélard sings the bi-racial couple’s tragic tale (well analyzed in Matthew Bowman’s excellent book The Abduction of Betty and Barney Hill) plaintively over strings, accordion, and acoustic guitar, gently inserting just the right notes of sadness into the ending couplet: “Did they dream this whole thing? Do you know?”
Not every song hones in on the theme, at least not directly. The delightfully groovy “The Healing” combines Latin rhythms with a progressive rock arrangement, while “Qi Lin” (a mythical Chinese beast) sinks into melancholy with Julien Bigorgne’s accordion leading the way. “A venir” (“Coming Soon”) balances nerves and confidence with power chords and creamy saxophone, as “Agatha” hints at epic prog rock while cutting bombast. The magnificent vanguard cut “Quinta del Sordo” references the house in which Francisco de Goya created his haunted Black Paintings with some of the album’s strongest melodies, tightest arrangements, and pure joy (despite the subject) in making music.
The melancholic, beautiful title track closes the album on a compositionally strong, emotionally wrenching note. Missing Times is a powerful and varied ride, made by master musicians who insist on direct emotional communication as much as technical accomplishment. Twenty years into their career, Ghost Rhythms generates another masterpiece.
