By Deuce

There’s no telling what you’ll get on Radio Fantasma, the latest release from the duo known as Mother Ghost. The LP, after all, is 13 cuts long—a number you’ll rarely see in modern buildings, tenements, etc. One of those songs is exactly zero minutes and zero seconds.

Seriously, that is. In fact, just to show you what type of gents you’re dealing with, that particular track is entitled “Negative Affirmations”.

Other numbers don’t make it quite a minute, like the vivacious “Sunshine”. Part skit, part interlude, and part song, it serves as a playground for the pair to stake their chops as a heavy metal band, grunge perhaps, or maybe even punk. The tempo’s got to be at least 120 BPM, if not way more. The drums are live and energy-inducing. The vocalist screams, pines, and roars. See if you can understand him. “Oh yeah” he appears to be caterwauling at some point.

And all of this occurs, again, barely within the space of a hot minute.

But, one of the hallmarks of this LP, and as the duo’s claim as artists, in fact, pertains to their proclivity for blurring, bending, and transcending genres. For the first couple tunes, they appear to be more of an electronica, dare we say EDM-inspired, band. Cuts like “Talk Show” and “Dead Inside” are rife with synths, some warm and protracted, as is the case on the latter. But typically, they’re diminutive, feisty, and rapid-fire in spurts, heightening the energy and the emotion conveyed through lead singer Oscar Flores.

The style he kicks, as Grand Puba Maxwell once termed it, you will remember. When he’s not raging, grunting, and bellowing his way through heavy metal numbers, he’s got a high-pitched, tripped out, expressive tenor that bends and sways over the track, conveying much in as little, or as many, words as he damn near pleases.

And, with the music on “Talk Show and a few other choice numbers, he can do no wrong with it. Many of these tunes are characterized by truly animated bass lines. To their credit, the best of them are more reminiscent of funk and down home backyard jams, than they are of rock or electronic  music (which is another tribute to the pair’s prolificacy for merging genres and styles at will).

Hence, the fact that anything can happen when listening to this album—especially for the first time.