There are highly conceptual, process-based albums, and then there’s GHOST, which absolutely thrives on a whole other level. Combining themes of grief and loss with the controversial concept of artificial intelligence, Amsterdam-based musician Asa Horvitz searched for the right combination of words and music and called upon AI designers and fellow musicians to complete the task.
Grieving from the 2017 loss of his father, jazz and experimental guitarist Bill Horvitz, Asa was looking for a musical language “to evoke our metaphysical and tangible experiences with loss and the weight of history that surrounds those who have passed on”, according to the press notes. Assembling a dataset of more than 150 pre-existing texts from throughout history that deal with grief – everything from notes and letters to classic books and science fiction novels – Asa Horvitz fed them through a custom Natural Language Processing AI system designed by Seraphina Goldfarb-Tarrant and Alejandro Calcaño.
Compositions resulted from vocal improvisations featuring bassist and vocalist Carmen Quill – who lost her father not long after the sessions began in 2019 – as well as Ariadne Randall and Bryan West on processing, synthesizers, and viola da gamba, and Horvitz’s uncle, pianist Wayne Horvitz. The result is – again, quoting the press materials: “A curious and bold musical syntax to suit the text, often setting it against the natural emphasis of speech, with each phoneme given equal weight.” On his website, Asa orvitz refers to the album as an “ever-evolving paean to mourning”.
The result in GHOST is something eerie, revelatory, and cathartic. Opening with “Sun Lord”, the listener is thrown into dreamlike confusion: fast, recited spoken word intertwined with the violent slashing of the viola da gamba, overprocessed voices, and synthetic orchestrations. This overture leads into the drone-like, stately “Hail Necessity”, as Quill sings against harmonium-like sustained notes, using an unedited AI printout, singing with passion, suffused in grief: “Hail with necessity, you mistress of the slate / I am angry with Mother Earth / I give up sleep to her mother, and I will cry / And my father is dead and I am the daughter of mighty friends.”
Some moments on GHOST seem more free-form than others, such as in “Still Regent of the Dead”, which comes off as a sort of fly-on-the-wall studio curiosity as Asa Horvitz recites texts amidst synthesizers and low-end rumbling. “Oak Tree”, which takes cues from Meredith Monk’s vocal compositions, rises from tentative gasps and murmurs before rising mightily to a gospel-like fervor, using only one AI-fed line of text as a guide: “There was an oak tree.”
Breaking somewhat from the concept is Wayne Horvitz’s self-explanatory “Piano Solo”, which provides a sparse variation on the often-breathtaking concepts unfolding on the record with, well, a breathtaking piano etude. The sparseness is carried over in other areas when the AI concept is reintroduced, as in the calming “Personality”, with Horvitz and Quill singing delicately around an eight-chord sequence. “Desire” also follows along gentler lines, with the vocals paired up with the warmth of minor-key synth notes, leading into a slightly more frenetic feel as Wayne Horvitz’s piano notes bring improvisatory jazz back into the fold.
GHOST concludes with one of the more puzzling, enigmatic pieces. Blasts of synth wash over vocals in a hymn-like melody, and Asa Horvitz’s vocals mesh with a backward version of his singing, like a sort of alien duet. “Alternate now,” he sings. You have a ghost now / Be a ghost now / On the last flight out. “This sounds more like an instruction to the listener, urging them to acknowledge these ghosts we all live with.
You’ll probably never hear anything like GHOST, and while it is undoubtedly an acquired taste, the honesty and fearlessness with which this project is approached is palpable, infectious, and appreciated and loved more with every listen.