I have always admired John Beckmann’s ability to steer Mortal Prophets as a fluid and versatile enough vehicle so that it can sonically travel through any sound, style, genre or scene it chooses. Not only that but whether kicking out the blues jams, as he did on “Me and the Devil,” exploring strange cinematic classical sounds on Hanussen or grooving away along the imagined psychedelic lucid dream thread of The Laurel Canyon Lost Sessions, it always sounds like the work of the same band. Perhaps one with split sonic personalities but more tightly connected than they might first appear.
Ghostland is a long album, or at least a regular album made up of many short tracks. The artist describes these tracks as “imaginary cinema,” which is a pretty good soundbite if you need one. As these ethereal, ambient, and illusory instrumentals drift past our consciousness, they conjure images of otherworldly soundscapes and alien vistas, the vastness of space, and visceral, primal memories.
But if you read those florid descriptions of mine and I seem to be suggesting this to be just another series of drifting synths and insubstantial musical fog, as might often be the case in such realms, then you obviously haven’t been paying attention to Mortal Prophets musical modus operandi.
Take “Outlaw Idol,” a weave of vintage blues lines and gnashing beats, a dark sonic storm ebbing and flowing in the middle distance, and a sense of growing dread…hardly the fluff and fey of the ambient world.
Similarly, “Scalped” owes something to the Morricone spaghetti western vibe; the title track running on a slightly off-kilter, strutting dance groove set up by a precision beat and some wandering, funky bass, and then there are tracks such as “Hidden Hand” which take the form of oriental future-synth sonics.
Imagine Cave and Ellis writing the soundtrack to a Cormac McCarthy penned novel about how the Martain West was won. Times it by ten and then form a musical anagram out of the resulting music. Even then you are only beginning to get close to the creative beauty found here.
As Mortal Prophet’s music has proven repeatedly, no one makes a cinematic soundtrack like John Beckmann does.
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