Ghost — Fetish
The first track opens with a looped and bright sounding rhythmic African and tribal voice element which slowly fades and get engulfed by a muffled and barren mixture of chugging train like bass judder and smaller skipping static tonality. Most of the track finds the two elements running together a repetitive and blown out almost sort of persistent groove like ‘wall’- the tracks ok, though I did find it started to drag a bit in the second half of it’s twenty minute runtime. Also there’s some quite neat off pattern static skips that appear later on in the track, but sadly there too few of these to make an impact on the tracks structure which does become tiresome in the end.
The second track comes in just shy of the twenty minute mark and is a swirling and twisting mass of muffled and melted African bass like elements and weaving ‘n’ smarting static texturing. This track has quite a entrancing feel to it, and rather brings to mind a flickering and static glitch bound footage of a African witch doctor deep in a trance, though sadly again this track does out stay it’s welcome by about five to ten mintues.
Track three is the shortest here at just under the seventeen and a half minute mark, and it finds Ghost mixing together a persistent static rain that’s underfed by rolling, brooding and muffled tribal like drone texture. The tracks a real nice mixture of grim and sinister tribal dread, and unforgiving seared static dwell, with the tracks intensity seemingly building and building though texturally I think it’s staying in the same place through-out.
Lastly we of course have track four which once more scapes in just under the twenty minute mark. The track starts out with a stuck slightly jazz tribal musical loop, then slow fades into this great and tense bass judder that’s seared by this constant and muffled stuck static rhythmic element. As the track progresses you start to make out this repetitive tribal drum like element which is quite haunting and captivating in it’s feel, as if the tracks slowly but surely putting you into some sort of voodoo like trance.
I was very much taken with Ghost’s first untitled from the start of 2011, and while “Fetish” has it’s moments of greatness on the whole I didn’t feel as captivated or surprised by this releases. I feel a bit more editing and trimming could have been done with the early two tracks, but certainly the last two tracks are often very hypotonic, tribal blown-out and psychedelically brutal in their unfolds. Lets just say “Fetish” is a good, but not great second release from this project.