- Fans of Ennio Morricone and Goblin will find much to love in this release. The track titles connote Filipino mysticism, but there's an audible influence springing from the scores of Spaghetti Westerns and Giallo Horrors. Too earnest to be pastiche, too singular to be outright homage, Ghost Note patch over the hearts on their sleeve with cogent composition.
A journey requires undertaking to reach the core of "Kapwa." The extended percussive intro soundtracks what feels like a lonely venture downriver. A clamour of tribal ritual grows ever ominously into the foreground while my mental camera pans to a jungle silhouette carving shapes from malevolently crouching onlookers. (That'll be the film score effect.) Things get tense, with screeching emanating from sources unknown and an increasingly bloodthirsty bang of the drums, before—joy! —the impending waterfall transpires to be nothing more than a musical mirage. Arpeggios with the timbre of a high-pitched harpsichord divulge the shift in light to reveal a Dorado of guitar and bass, nudging each other nonchalantly along a gilded progression that makes the peril before worthwhile.
If "Kapwa" was for the editing suite of Sergio Leone, "Albularyo" is the corn syrup red of Dario Argento. With all the tom rolls and timp hits of a nouveau Tenebre, Ghost Note do horror disco like it never went out of fashion (Salem, oOoOO, take note in case of a Witch House backlash). It complements the macabre artwork—a preparatory scene in a real-life re-enactment of the crucifixion photographed by one of the duo himself—that is symbolic not of any religious hogwash, but rather of what a thoroughly great mind-fuck this record is.
Tracklist A Kapwa
B Abularyo