Haunted Ghost’s Chanson du Jour :: beauty be together edition

Mark McGuire & Trouble Books :: Song for Reinier Lucassen’s Sphinx

Two great forces of the Ohio music scene collide with this sprawling, beautiful work of electronic drone songs and soundscapes. Trouble Books is a couple who started their label Bark & Hiss not too long ago and have since put out two full length albums and an EP. They play slow, entrenching, and melodic synth ingrained music, the kind of stuff for summer storms and rainy beaches. Mark McGuire is one of my current and possibly all time favorite musicians. He lends his soaring, looped guitars to the brilliant Cleveland based trio Emeralds and has been releasing myriad solo albums for the past 6 years. His influence on this collaboration is incredibly dynamic and creates a huge sonic atmosphere more full and sustained than Trouble Books’ earlier releases while more controlled and melodic than a lot of his Emeralds and solo works. The single off the album, is an ode to the Dutch painter Reinier Lucassen’s work show above, the Sphinx, was one of his less known though still influential pieces from the figurative expressionism he helped to create. Perhaps that is why the song is so beautifully ethereal and a bit surreal, not completely immersed in reality yet not entirely out of reach.

Song for Reinier Lucassen’s Sphinx by TrblBks