A few years back (2013) I was riding home from work in a taxi. Annoyingly, it was quite busy, so a lot of time was spent sitting in traffic. Fortunately, the tedium of the laboured journey was made more bearable by the driver's choice in music. He was playing some chilled, instrumental guitar music that I really liked the sound of. I glanced over at the HUD and saw the name 'Hungry Ghosts', but no song title. I committed the name to memory.
Later, I Googled Hungry Ghosts but found very little about them online. I learned from the only page I could find that they'd recorded 2 full length albums, but there was nothing to stream and no way to get hold of these albums. A few months later, I started looking again, but this time, I discovered they had a Bandcamp page which gave me the opportunity to actually listen to their music. I really, really liked what I heard.
The beauty of Hungry Ghosts' music is its minimalism. Most of their songs feature just guitar backed by violin, sparse percussion and occasional accordion flourishes. The spartan arrangements and clean production gives their compositions space and room to breathe, showing that quietness and even silence can sometimes convey intensity greater than loudness. Their songs also possess an almost cinematic quality, many of which wouldn't sound out of place in a epic western.
I picked up their eponymous debut, the EP and this, the follow up around the same time and they are all phenomenal pieces of work, but this is the one that's stuck with me the most. When I listen to Hungry Ghosts, I am always struck by the emotional dimensions their music invokes, and how it's able to say so much with no lyrics whatsoever. In fact, lyrics would detract from their music in a big way, especially given its film score-like quality.
Whilst I am relatively new to this band, the fact that their music has made such a huge impact on me so quickly speaks volumes.
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