‘Something Beautiful’ is the latest offering from local Adelaide duo Happy Ghosts. Happy Ghosts are Andrew Muecke and Ashley Starkey and together they have produced a very unique CD.
It contains four tracks of downbeat electronica all with a distinct feel and sound within the ambience of this genre. You won’t find the usual ‘verse, chorus, verse’ here, and yet the tracks all have their own solid foundation. This can be heard in the use of sequenced drums and keyboards, but it is the layering of vocals, guitar and spoken-word samples that creates the real aural experience.

Track 2, ‘Four Emotions’, features guest vocalist Carrie Barr. It cruises along at a funky pace with an archetypal beat that has it’s origins in the music of West Africa. The track is the most dreamlike of the four. Carrie’s sweet multi-layered vocals drift across sustained keyboard textures. It’s almost hymn-like in it’s atmosphere.

Track 3, ‘Sharks or Skin’, is reminiscent of Happy Ghost’s earlier material with it’s seemingly random fragments of speech, set to a poppy electronic beat. It has a surreal effect especially with the chromatic ‘sirens’ in the background!

The last track, ‘Jungle Music’ at 1’54”, is more like an outro. It comes in with a cathedral organ playing a pentatonic scale, heavily reverbed with a ringing guitar. This is followed by some more curious spoken-word samples and then suddenly, it all ends……At first you just sit there, then you get up and play the whole thing again!

And that is the essence of this CD. It is something you can listen to many times over and never get bored. ‘Something Beautiful’ is a fascinating, creative and very engrossing piece of electronica.
adelaidebands.com (A.Sheerin December 2005)