“It’s like a dream inside a dream”. Towards the end of Holy Ghosts! excellent outdoor disco dance set at P.S. 1 -the Queens annex of the Museum of Modern Art, I know they’ve played these songs earlier, “Hold On” -is this the third or fourth time I’ve heard it today? And not just because I was at the soundcheck.
Yeah, this is the fourth time round because THEY PLAY THE REMIXES AND IT IS THE BEST IDEA ON EARTH!!!
On a Saturday afternoon, high art is reaching down to its cultural kid brothers and a packed out MOMA has become the rave of your dreams. The smell of weed and tobacco, the spilled beer and dance ambiance is so prevalent, you might as well be in South Beach and not a nasty industrial segment of the second least favorite borough in New York, inches from the 59th street bridge in Long Island City, a place that seems to have decided to become gentrified and then, hit by the recession, changed its mind.
Outside PS 1 the line snakes along forever, inside I rush up the stairs and get a close but side view of Holy Ghost!
Holy Ghost! open with “I Will Come Back” and are immediately the disco band of your dreams. All the people there in the open air muffle the sound and it isn’t the glorious noise of earlier this afternoon but it doesn’t throw Holy Ghost off at all this time out.
Everything is sticking.
One minute Alex is busting a move, getting away from being stuck behind the keyboards, grabbing his mic and dancing, just like everybody else: a sea of moving bodies (lotsa girls, everybody else straight and gay couples) enthralled by lethal beats.
The band has three drummers at one point, and it sounds like 70s disco: not Bee Gees but Tavares. Thrilling disco blasts mixed with symphonic backing tracks and bpms to spare and then some. And this powerful, electronically mastered sound is full of surprise touches: the five note signature to “Hold On” is repeated twice with a one note variation that puts it in a class all its own. On a darker funk song I don’t know, there is so much serious sound manipulation I am not certain where it is coming from and there is a single minded ferocity to their dance vibe that is spooky and danceable.
Right now the essential Holy Ghost! set is “Static On The Wire” “Hold On” “I Will Come back” and “Say My Name” rejiggered, reformatted, replayed.
Once the album comes out (January 2011) Holy Ghost Mach I will be over, so catch em while they are still playing this terrific brace of first songs.