This first Thrill Jockey opus from Berlin's resident shapeshifting guitar visionary is a mindblowing creative leap forward, as otherworldly tunings, American Primitive-style steel-string guitar, autotuned pop, futuristic psychedelia, field recordings, and spasmodic electronics all collide in a one-of-a-kind headphone album supernova. While Reidy’s more vocal- and pop-minded impulses have previously surfaced fleetingly on World in World and elsewhere, melodic vocal hooks are the beating heart of Ghost/Spirit in an unpredictably kaleidoscopic and mesmerizing whole.
Normally, the artificiality of autotuned vocals rubs me the wrong way, but the digital soul of these fractal reveries is perfectly counterbalanced by the alien harmonies and twanging, cathartic physicality of Reidy’s guitar playing. In fact, I am reminded of how Joanna Newsom’s masterpiece Ys was radically transformed by Van Dyke Park’s bold orchestral arrangements, but Reidy is improbably behind every side of the wild stylistic clashes here (albeit with some help from cellist Judith Hamann, Emptyset’s James Ginzburg, and others). When everything comes together just right, as it does on pieces like “Satellite” and “Maybe,” it feels like Reidy’s dissolving and dreamlike postmodern blues are an indestructible island of zen within a delirious mindfuck of unpredictably collapsing and accelerating electronics and convulsive broken beats.
