"Imagine british composer Muslimgauze (r.i.p) pulled into ambient spheres. A haunting ritual experience." VITAL WEEKLY


"A well appropriated musical and textural contrast can be an incredibly satisfying thing to hear. That way of combining ambient prettiness with noise and fuzz chosen by the likes of Fennesz and Belong for instance, or Barn Owl’s dusty twilight stasis atop a bed of doomed grunt. The feeling of having your brain pulled in several directions at once or in a jarring or disorientating sequence, being forced to feel conflicting bodily and mental reactions as the material unfolds, can distinguish an interesting, multi-layered album from its counterparts.

What we have with Phil Maggi’s ‘Ghost Love’ is a set of tracks that visits various outposts of experimental music and wraps them up into something that shimmers with droning organic ambience on one hand; on the other it guides the listener through a quasi-ritualistic experience set out through primitive percussive or mechanical rhythms, captured ethnic vocal loops and even some Leyland Kirby-esque ‘hauntology’ (most obviously on the closing track) to push the unsettling atmosphere and support the record’s title.

And unsettling really is the word for the majority of this album. Tracks like ‘Hordes’ and ‘Meshes, Ashes’ seem to possess a sense of dread, steeped in weird history and darkly enchanting like uncovered sonic relics of a long abandoned time in a distant place. This seems to overlap into something more exotic as the ever changing locational character of other tracks aim to place us, briefly, in one of a variety of surreal climates. And again, the exoticism then overlaps with the aforementioned ambience that makes up a large part of the album’s lighter side, more in tune with the kind of delicate ambience you might expect from one of the wide selection of artist operating under the swollen ambient / drone umbrella. Though these tracks contrast notably with the otherness (Andrew Liles mastered this, which makes a strange kind of sense) they make for an album overview which is unpredictable, intriguing and fairly unique in it’s ability to smartly combine the ambient with the avant-garde. ‘Slavery’ is perhaps the finest example of this – a simple, Ous Mal sounding ostinato backed with layers of vocals and slapped drums that continues for six decidedly beautiful minutes.

And that, in a nutshell, is I think how this album succeeds. On paper it could easily be expected to form a bit of a mess, contrasting ideas not working together but cancelling each other out and weakening the overall work. It is not so. ‘Ghost Love’ bravely attempts to meld these and the result is an album full of artifacts to pick through, get lost in and emerge satisfied despite being none the wiser about what the last forty two minutes mean and why the sounds have been married as they have… the lack of resolution one might feel at perhaps never knowing this only adds to its mystifying personality." Daniel W J Mackenzie, FLUID RADIO

"Ghost Love serait à la fois la souvenance d’une romance survivant au temps qui passe et l’amour qui, parce qu’il a cessé d’être, ne cesse de vous hanter." Eric Therer, RIF RAF

"PHIL MAGGI Ghost Love (Idiosyncratics Records, idcd 005): Wie Yannick Franck, mit dem er in Idiosyncrasia zusammenspielte, ist Maggi, der auch als Sänger in Ultraphallus rockt, Teil einer kleinen Dröhn-Szene in Lüttich, oder Liège, wie die Belgier sagen. Sein Inspirationsspektrum aus Werner Herzog, tibetanischer und Klezmer-Musik, Henri Barbusse (dessen WW1-Ploitation-Reißer Das Feuer arg überbewertet ist), Istanbul, Gurdjieff, Leadbelly und Morricone lässt auf ein großes Herz schließen. Gemastert von Andrew Liles, bilden die 11 Szenen der 'Geisterliebe' ein hauntologisches Gewebe aus hintergründigen Stimmen und Gesängen, geloopten Beats, einer verstaubten Spieluhr, dem Daueralarm tibetanischer Blasmusik, aus Nostalgie und Verlust. Kinderstimmen meinen verlorene Kindheit, Vogelgezwitscher meint verlorene Natur. 'Forest' stelle ich mir mühelos als getürkten Muslimgauze-Remix von Eskimo vor, dem Ethno-Fake von The Residents. Typisch ist ein rauschendes, klingelndes Dröhnen und Brausen, ein Gemisch aus Meer und Wind, der bei 'Hordes' fernen Kirchengesang, bei 'Tightrope' tribalen Frauengesang mit Handclapping und Gefiedel mitführt. 'Slavery' loopt Ethnotamtam und Orchestergewaber, in das sich klagende Frauenvokalisation aus alter Zeit einmischt. Maggi erzielt da einen ähnlichen Zeitsturz wie Moby bei Play oder Carter Burwell beim Soundtrack zu The General's Daughter. 'Witches' lässt Feuer knistern zu Vokalisation wie von The Bulgarian Voices. 'Chains' schließlich weckt mit hohen Strings Klezmerwehmut, überkrustet mit schmerzlicher Patina. Und ein Tenor aus Schellacktagen treibt das Pathos auf die Spitze." Rigobert Dittmann, BAD ALCHEMY

"Inspiré par Werner Herzorg, Leadbelly, Ennio Morricone, les musiques traditionnelles klezmer et Tibesti, Ghost Love est un disque atmosphérique. Mystique et méditatif. Sombre et halluciné. Une promenade apaisante et stressante, rassurante et flippante sur des sables mouvants et inconnus. Trippant." FOCUS VIF