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You
probably don’t know it, but you’re lucky that Dan Soltzberg,
a.k.a. Ghost 7, is back in the area. During a year-long stint in California
working as a teacher and over four years in Japan, his work as a solo
bass guitarist has had ample time to grow. Living in the East has had
an undeniable effect on Soltzberg, and not just because his studio is
compact as a bento box. His pared-down music laboratory now consists of
only a select few guitar effects, Korg sampling drum machine, and his
bass guitar, which is his primary instrument. "I make all this music off
my bass. That kinda started when I was really young" A friend of mine
got a synthesizer, a Yamaha DX-7 and he brought it over to my house, we
were going to jam" he hit this arpeggiator and his keyboard just started
making all this music, with the press of a button. I stood there with
my 4-string instrument and I just went, how can I keep up with this? |
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At that point
it was kind of a crossroad, and I said, okay I’m going to embrace the
limitations of this instrument, and I’m going to really see what I can
do with it." By choosing to operate simply by improvising bass tones into
various processing and looping devices, he creates airy, ambient compositions
similar to Robert Fripp. Perhaps this is the partial inspiration for his Ghost
moniker, which he recently altered to Ghost 7. When probed about his inspirations
for his deep music, he cites the Durutti Column, Kazuhisa Uchihashi, and Hood.
Also, "Dub music in general-- Scientist, Mad Professor, King Tubby etc. I
just love the deep hard groove, all the space between sounds, and the nuance
of the way each time you hear an instrument, it's mixed slightly differently."
He applies these concepts consciously to his current work, admitting, "The
genesis of this system that I’ve got now is 10 years of thinking about
how I can do this, and how I can create a full spectrum of sound with this
very simple instrument."
You probably
wouldn’t guess that the full range of bass rumbles, buzzings, and hums
were all extracted from the same source. "It’s funny, I hate recording
in a certain way, because I really feed off the energy of playing live. So
the way I record is I inadvertently record as I’m playing at home," he
curiously describes his impromptu methods, "It’s like a journal of a
time period." Several things influenced his move to Japan, a combination of
economic factors and being really interested in Japanese architecture and
pop culture, among them.
While spending
time there, he worked on several different projects, such as playing with
John Harte, an Australian, and making connections that would lead to his composing
a soundtrack for a film which is being entered into the Sundance Film Festival.
"We kinda fell into that scene through these people that we knew and we were
playing with--we did a CD over there and we hired E-da (of Boredoms fame)
as a studio drummer, because all our drummers sucked so bad." The film by
Daniel Chalwin and Colin Rivers is appropriately enough titled "Japanned,"
and follows "a cross-cultural couple trying to deal with their differences."
Back in the
US, he has been splitting his time between his solo work as Ghost 7 and Orange,
a band he founded with his wife, Theresa. Soltzberg describes the latter as
a "wall of sound" project. Similar to Flying Saucer Attack or Labradford,
immersive melodic layers and feedback enfolds delicate, sympathetic vocals.
Soltzberg is now planning to take Orange a step further to make it more organic,
by phasing out electronic percussion in favor of a real drummer. "The drum
machine's great--it does exactly what I tell it to--but I'm starting to really
want the kind of energy and flexibility a good live drummer brings to the
music." |
