San Franciscos Tim Cohen recorded Ghost Ride on an eight-track with help from his friend Evan Martin before recruiting four other Bay Area musicians to form Black Fiction. What results in an impressive first album that steals elements from all forms of music and masterfully patches them together. In the tradition of early Beck and Ariel Pink ("There is a Light features lyrics about magic and the echoing, distortion Pink is known for), Black Fiction experiment with everything from xylophones, to samples, recorders and basic drums and guitars. Theres a real energy to these songs, especially on "Something Else, which features carnival keyboards, and triumphant, disintegrating "la, la, las. Cohens skilled at welding his gentle vocals with the stark, definite rhythms of the samples and percussion. "Magic Hands illustrates this best with Cohens vocals melting into drum machine beats and electronic bagpipes. One track that best shows the different musical influences captured on Ghost Ride is "I Spread the Disease, a high-pitched love ballad with old school beats, a good deal of tambourine and the lyrics "My baby likes a warm summer breeze/But she dont love me when she wont let me breathe.
(Bee-Side)Black Fiction
Ghost Ride
BY Sofi PapamarkoPublished Aug 1, 2006