BACKGROUND

“Ghost” is a collaboration with Embers and HeartBeatHero (aka Daniel Barton). We've worked together in the past, most notably on the HeartBeatHero remix of Unholy.   Daniel sent me an instrumental version of the synth and drum tracks and let me run with the rest.  I wrote a melody and lyrics that are decidedly vampiric (see below), hearkening back to my obsession years ago with Anne Rice novels (and basically all things fanged and undead) as a life-long horror buff.  After adding the vocals and various guitars, I mixed and it and here we have it!  The song has a definite dark mood, also driven by the catchy synth melodies and vocal hooks.  It was a pleasure as always to put this together with HeartBeatHero!  

LYRICS:

Destiny entangles us
We are star-crossed
We are love-lost

Eternity, it beckons us
We are bloodlust
We are evermore

I'm a ghost to you
I will haunt you as long as you want me to
And I would die for you
I will haunt you as long as you need me to

Destiny, it curses us
We are darkness
We are evermore

I'm a ghost to you
I will haunt you as long as you want me to
And I would die for you
I will haunt you as long as you need me to

I'm a ghost to you
I will haunt you...

THE MUSIC & STUFF

The song is decidedly driven by the haunting chords and synth melodies that Daniel provided, with a driving synthwave mid-tempo groove as the song kicks in.  It lent itself easily to vocal melodies, and I used a mixture of falsetto high harmonies and lower "evil" lower-octave support courtesy of things like SoundToy's Little AlterBoy plugin.  In the breakdown, I unabashedly evoked surf-twang new wave 80s vibes with my Gretsch and healthy doses of spring reverb.  There are some subtle bizarre guitar feedback/delay textures leading out of the breakdown, courtesy of the amazing Unfiltered Audio Sandman plugin.  As I was tracking the song, the last chorus seemed to lend itself to some big-a$$ chugging cybermetal guitars; as always, Neural DSP provided the juice, this time with the killer (heh heh) Fortin NTS Suite amp plugin, with my Strandberg Prog 7 giving me the low end.  At the very end, there are some super-creepy vocals powered by a mix of Waves OVOX and Izotope's VocalSynth2.  When all was said and done with the song, Daniel and I agreed we needed a video, and we had a blast mixing in some cool imagery with footage of us playing in our respective studios.  I did some heavy filtering and editing of my footage, making me look pretty ghostly and gnarly, so much so that the video scared Daniel's young son-- wooops!  Anyway, hope you enjoy the song-- it was a blast to put together!