Some pursuits go hand in hand. Playing in a Beatles cover band with your dad and making crystalline melodies, however, are probably not the most complimentary of pairings. But Rob Verrecchia manages to pull it off, putting in a shift as George Harrison some evenings and banging out quality remix after quality remix the next. Under the moniker Ghost Hunter, he’s spent the past few years crafting some incredible sounds, which has unsurprisingly earned him respect from high places, with The Quietus, Don’t Die Wondering and No Pain in Pop falling over themselves to throw superlatives upon him.
The sounds Ghost Hunter makes are big and otherworldly – pop made for another dimension, even if Rob himself comes from the wilds of Sheffield. In a feature in NME, the music was described as ‘post dubstep’, and that comes someway close without really hitting the but Joyfully void of anything grim, working class or stereotypically northern, there’s a lot to be taken from the sheer rootlessness of what has been created. There’s the potential for bundles of energy, for blockbuster, show stopping tunes, but it’s wonderfully suppressed in favour of depth and guile.whether he’s crafting his own songs or laying waste to someone elses (Sky Larkin, These New Puritans and Blondes are amongst the victims), the result is always something warped yet bizarrely, imperceptibly optimistic.
Ghost Hunter – Island Barbados [download from nme radar]
[myspace]
