Q&A: The Ghost of a Thousand

Currently reaping a pretty positive response for latest album ‘New Hopes, New Demonstrations’, Brighton’s Ghost of a Thousand are certainly one to watch in the coming months. We sent a few questions over to vocalist Tom Lacey, and he kindly took time out of his fairly hectic schedule to answer them.

Rock Blogster: How have things been going? Been busy recently?

Tom Lacey: Very busy, it’s been great although our main focus now in our July Tour in the UK in a couple of weeks.

RB: Some people might start hearing about you for the first time with this album – what kind of band would you describe yourselves as?

TL: I think we’re a black hearted rock’n'roll band that obviously grew up listening to a lot of punk and hardcore. I’m not sure how to describe it in a more concise way!

RB: Your new album is an impressive piece of work. How did you go about putting it together?

TL: We wrote it over 2008 after we stopped touring the first album, and recorded it over 5 weeks in Stockholm with Pelle Gunnerfeldt. It was super fun.

RB: What were the biggest influences on its themes?

TL: It’s all about how as a 26 year old all the things that defined your youth, your parents, partying, thinking you’re going to grow up to be a spaceman/doctor/vet etc etc all get taken away from you and how you deal with these things in a positive or negative way.

RB: The artwork is pretty impressive. Who did it, and how did it come about?

TL: That was me! We did have another guy that was set to do it but it didn’t work out so I decided to go ahead and make it myself. There’s loads of my art on myspace.com/mrtomlacey if anyone needs artwork done for them!

RB: There’s a lot of bands that have suddenly grown very resentful at the world they’re in. What really pisses you guys off the most?

TL: Really? I think a lot of bands are far too complacent about the world we live in. I find bands that bang on and on about their hardcore backgrounds and then write completely ball-less pop tunes quite frustrating.

RB: To combat these complaints, would you like to suggest some solutions?

TL: Ban Black Flag t-shirts, seriously, they’ve been split up for so long there are other bands you could be into too.

RB: What kind of things have you got lined up for the future?

TL: Touring in July is the big one, and then we have the Eastpak Antidote tour with Alexisonfire, Troy and Antiflag in Oct, that will be incredible. I’m doing the artwork for the This City album too which is taking up a lot of my time.

RB: What music have you yourselves been getting into as of late?

TL: The new Crystal Stilts album is brilliant, as is the new Mastodon. Our new record is pretty good too!

Interview: *shels

Later this year we should see a brand new album from *shels, and anyone who heard their phenomenal debut should be extremely excited by this prospect. To whet your appetite, we had a chat with Mehdi Safa, brains behind the band and the label *shelsmusic who are beginning to make some really great signings. It’s a long’un, so prepare your reading glasses!

Interview: Spotify discussed.

If you’ve been on the Internet at least once in the past month, there’s around a 87% chance (yes, that statistic was completely made up on the spot using my Statisicometer) that you’ve at least heard the briefest mention of Spotify. And if you’ve no idea what this Spotify may be, then the gushing praise the Internet has lambasted upon it may lead you to believe that, yes, Jesus Christ has returned in the form of a freely distributed computer program.

Unfortunately for Christians all over the world, Spotify isn’t the second coming. However, what Spotify is, is a bold step in online music distribution. After downloading the client (which shuns all this ‘In Your Browser Web 2.0 Magic’ for a program that looks eerily similar to Apple’s iTunes) you suddenly find yourself with, as the Spotify frontpage puts it, a world of music. There’s no denying the program’s simple efficiency – the searchable catalogue streams quicker than Usain Bolt running from a pack of Cheetahs, it supports scrobbling to Last.fm out of the box and leaves a tiny imprint on your computer’s resources for the CPU conscious.

But Spotify’s greatest success is it’s catalogue of music. Whilst no means exhaustive, it is growing steadily by the day as their regularly updated blog attests to. I spoke to Spotify’s Global Community Manager, Andres Sehr, about the program and it’s seemingly infallible determination to conquer the musical world.