Founded by musician and novelist Mark Brend in 2009, Ghostwriter is a fluid project that brings together a revolving cast of contributors, recording remotely. Tremulant, created over several years, involves Brend, with historian Suzy Mangion, psych folk Anglican bishop Andrew Rumsey and Americana singer Michael Weston King of My Darling Clementine fame providing the vocals. Drawing on a shared love of antique evangelical hymns and spiritual songs, using English, Welsh, Scottish and American source material from the 19th and early 20th centuries, Tremulant takes its name from a device on a pipe organ which varies the wind supply to the pipes causing a fluctuation in their amplitude and pitch, producing a tremolo and vibrato effect.
With minimal percussion and guitar backing, it opens with a primarily a capella haunting reading of the spiritual ‘Satan, Your Kingdom Must Come Down’, a coda of drone and snare giving way to a mostly instrumental ten-minute drone, piano and organ arrangement of Charles Homer Gabriel’s hymn ‘I Stand Amazed’, echoey vocals augmenting the liturgical feel. A 69-second sparse and woozy atmospheric instrumental, ‘Here’ is the bridge to ‘Often Forfeit, again otherworldly, ghostly instrumental with just a brief vocal led by Mangion, a variation of ‘Oh What Peace We Often Forfeit’, itself based around ‘What A Friend We Have In Jesus’.
Rumsey brings his pulpit voice to the spoken intro to ‘The Anchor’ aka ‘We Have An Anchor’, penned in 1882 by American hymnist Priscilla Jane Owens, reedy churchy organ and rumbling drums leading to a brief hiatus before, in keeping with the title imagery, the fragmentary 16-minute closer continues with storm effects, ships bells, drone and Mangion echoingly singing the lyrics in stark relief, the ambient instrumentation resuming as it washes to a peaceful shore. Hypnotically beautiful.
Mike Davies
Project website: www.ghostwriter3.bandcamp.com/album/tremulant
‘Satan, Your Kingdom Must Come Down’ – official video: https://ghostwriter3.bandcamp.com/track/satan-your-kingdom-must-come-down
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