Media Musings #9 - Ghost Funk Orchestra
"Remember not to be hard on yourself when nothing clicks."
Ghost Funk Orchestra 10/31/19 (Photo by Justin Joffe)
I first met Seth Applebaum, a video colorist by day and a composer/bandleader/ quarantine orchestra conductor by night, through our mutual friend Dan Soto of Dust Hat fame. Seth’s main musical output, Ghost Funk Orchestra, started as a bedroom project, fusing latin, funk, jazz and soul sounds into a groovy, psychoactive brew. When we first spoke, Seth schemed about putting together a full band. Then he did. And it was good.
Last year was a big one for Seth. For one thing, he moved. He also put together the “Ghost Funk Quarantine Orchestra,” a virtual assemblage of musicians (including yours truly) that remotely recorded parts Seth arranged for a Ben Pirani cover and a Bill Withers cover. Then, last November, Ghost Funk released An Ode to Escapism, a record full of lush string and horn arrangements that encourages us to take it in as a complete, singular listen. It’s funny that Seth conceived this record well before quarantine, and the last parts were laid down just as the world changed, as its lyrical themes suggest the need for removing oneself from the hustle and bustle of our modern woes.
I spoke to Seth about what you do when the plans that were poised to catapult your art into the greater cultural consciousness suddenly evaporate, his philosophies around making ensemble music remotely, and much more.
How's it going?
Going all right.
That's good. How's home ownership treating you?
It's good. I mean, the interesting thing about making this jump in the middle of a pandemic is that I was already at a very limited social capacity, and thankfully we already had friends that had just recently moved up here. So, we're not going out, just running away from all the people we socialize with.
But even if we weren't seeing a lot of people on a regular basis, there was definitely a little bit of our mental hurdle to get over with just knowing that we are physically further from people. We are physically further from our former home base.
That part was weird, but the better part is we were really sick of the apartment grind and having our own place that we can do whatever with has been awesome.
Your old home studio was kind of this hallowed character in the story of Ghost Funk Orchestra in a lot of ways. What does that that looks like now, not just logistically or feng-shui-wise, but creatively. How does having your studio in a physical new place change the way you think about composition, change the way you think about recording, change the way you think about writing, that kind of thing?
Honestly, it's been great, because save for the very first release, Night Walker, everything after that was recorded in the Ridgewood basement. I generated a ton of stuff Ghost Funk and otherwise that in that studio space, so there's something to be said. There's two ways to look at it. One way is it's very lived in. I know it like the back of my hand, which is conducive to just making stuff, but on the other hand it was kind of growing stale.
I'd been there for so long. I was kind of running out of inspiration in that particular space, so it was kind of nice to blow it up and put it back together in a new room. Because now I have to learn the acoustics of this new room, the feel of it. With that, new ideas will pop up because I think a little differently when I'm in the new space. I'm not thinking about bugging the neighbors in my apartment, so maybe I'm drumming louder. There's a lot of little things that are proving to be beneficial to the new stuff I'm working on.
I imagine there's a psychic component to it too. Ghost Funk was really cresting on a high point when all hell broke loose last year. There was that big Brooklyn Bowl show we were all psyched for with Antibalas. I imagine there's some stressful energy compounded in the fact that you're going back to that same studio, that same place. Are you strategizing differently about the future of GFO, about the return now that you're in a new physical space and mental space?
Kind of. I mean, so there's a few things at play there. Obviously it took me a little while to fully come to terms with all the opportunities that we had left on the table, because we had some really great shows that were coming up and definitely sort of like milestones for us, and for me. So it took me a little bit to fully wrap my head around the fact that those just weren't going to happen and maybe get postponed, but to very different future.
Once I got past that and was just like, okay, this is not going to be live. And for the foreseeable future, part of that definitely made moving upstate a little easier to swallow, because there's no opportunities right now in the city to take advantage of. It really felt untethered in a way.
Ghost Funk Orchestra 10/31/19 (Photo by Justin Joffe)
The city is still very much accessible, but reality is that the members of the band, as right before the pandemic hit, we're all scattered. Even more-so now. One of our members, she went back home to Israel with no definitive return date. And one of our other singers has an exit date from New York that was set up before all this happened. So she already had an outdate. Then everybody else is like, a lot of people are just kind of scattered around, upstate and New Jersey and long Island.
The logistics were insane before, and they're even more insane now. So I've kind of just stopped worrying about the live band because, until there is a clearer path back to the stage, there's really nothing to do. I can't gather people in my apartment or in my house to rehearse because it's just not, we're not there yet. And so it's really like, my focus has gone fully back to the studio. It's kind of like back to square one, but with momentum. I'm not thinking about the stage, I'm just making recordings.
That seems like healthier option. You just kind of take stock of things when they do feel like you're in a good place again. The acceptance piece to all of this feels huge. On the other hand, you have been a lot more innovative than some in thinking about what collaboration looks like remotely, in the abstract sense.
Everybody was trying to launch these live platforms for music, collaboration, but obviously, with the yard or whatever, it's the latency on the zooms you can't jam. But you put together a remote, quarantine orchestra to cover Ben Pirani and the late, great Bill Withers. To what degree is that something you consider to be a sustainable way to work, say, if live music doesn’t come back till late winter or early spring of 2022?
A lot of the session musicians that I work with and that I've been friends with, out of necessity, bought recording equipment so they could still take those kinds of gigs in the absence of going to a studio and being part of a bigger orchestra. I've also done a lot of remote collaborating as far as, sending off arrangements for people to play. They send me back files, and no one's going to know, no one is going to hear, it's not going to be evident that they weren't recorded in the same room — except for the time period they were created in as the main giveaway. I'm just getting pieces here and there.
That part of the process, that's actually been a plus in a way I almost hesitate to say because I have friends that own studios and obviously it's tough for them. But for somebody like me and for them, it's a lot easier to get that kind of stuff done when everybody owns their own gear. I'm just kind of sending sheet music around.
On the philosophical side, though, It's not the ideal way to make music. There's no way around it. I can send things off and get good quality performances back. But if I'm not in the room, I can't be giving notes live. I can't conduct. There's just no energy to feed off of.
When we were doing the arrangements for An Ode To Escapism, we were in a studio and everybody could go into the control room or be in headphones and we're all reacting to a good take at the same time, which is exciting. It kind of builds you up for the next tunes. When people are all doing their things solo, it's very clinical. It doesn't feel artistic in a way. It feels very business.
Glad you mentioned the new record too, is it one of those things I've been noticing is a ton of bands releasing records with themes that are eerily like reflective of the 2020 zeitgeist, but they wrote them before, or recorded it before, and it's kind of prophetic hindsight. Ode to Escapism, even the title itself. Can you also walk me through the timeline relative to it coming out last year? Why did you and Colemine decide to soldier on and release it last year?
Sure. I always pretty much always am working at least in some small capacity on the next release. That record was during the Songs for Paul PR cycle or whatnot, or when it was at the pressing plant in 2018, that's kind of when I started demoing songs for Ode To Escapism. So between 2018 and all of 2019, I was working on that record. And then in February 2020, that's when I was in the studio doing the horns and strings. We recorded the vocals the day prior.
So it all, I really kind of squeeze it all in at the last, without knowing it.
You just made the finish line.
Yeah. I submitted all the materials in March, and the intention was always for it to come out in 2020. Then when things started to happen, when all of the pandemic realities were hitting, I also had sort of a weird crystallizing moment where I kind of, I was revisiting the materials I had just sent off for this record and listening to the lyrics. I'm like, ‘this is weirdly timely,’ with it obviously indicative of other things that were going on in the world that I never could have predicted last year. Nobody could have, so I think part of the desire to keep pushing forward with it, was that it just felt apropos, whether or not it was a coincidence. There was just a lot that we said on the record that felt like it had sort of a relevance to what was going on last year.
And on the other side of it, we've never relied on the live band existing in order to get our music out there. We started releasing stuff before a live band was even in the cards. So we built enough of a fan base just based on our recordings alone, that we figured there was really nothing to lose by putting it out without the ability to play a release show or anything like that. It's just not expected of us. It was almost like the cherry on top, but we weren't born from the stage. We were kind of born from the studio.
Totally. And the fact that you assembled GFO and put it all together gave you maybe like a logical brain that helps the project survive. It also sounds more like refined than anything you’ve recorded prior. So I wonder if you've heard anything to that effect, about the reaction to the record this year from people who have been stuck at home with their turntables?
A lot of my person-to-person interactions with people who listen to it came from the vinyl-collecting community that has a circle on Instagram. They've really helped champion it, honestly. They got out the word as much, if not more-so than straight up PR, because they're just telling their friends. They leaned into my little ‘turn off the lights’ call to action. I think they appreciated that we put in a lot of effort to clean up our act sonically, and take risks but also make them audible.
I'm not trying to reach for being the dustiest, crustiest, low-fi funk band anymore. We're trying to do something a little more mature without losing sight of what's fun about early releases. We're trying to up the ante and do more for the people that they want to hear. They buy records for their nice turntables because they want to hear something that sounds good.
We’ve spoken in the past about your day job as a colorist, and you explained how there wasn't a lot of overlap between that and your recording career. But this year's required a lot of people to bring their skills from one world or one life they live into another. Has there been any more overlap or bleed this year as a result of just having to be scrappy and do it yourself?
Yeah, for sure. I self-produced and directed all the videos that we made for songs on the record because in early on in the year, right after I had submitted all my materials to Colemine, I was starting to talk to people about collaborating on music videos because I wanted to come up with some promo materials. And then, very quickly that went out the window. I had to get creative, and started small.
The first video we made was for the song, “Fuzzy Logic.” And it was just me and Romy. I was all messed up and we just made what we could with some weird color, light bulbs, lens filters and stuff.
But I had to be in charge of all the video stuff because there's really no way to delegate. I'm very particular about what I like and don't like visually, so the only way I was going to make this work is if I did it myself. I put a lot of time and energy into making a visual component for some of the songs on the record. So that was definitely a big crossover.
That seems to be like the push and pull — how do you make the best with what you have and do what you can while also maintaining those standards, whatever the medium?
Honestly my best advice would be, if it doesn't feel like it's going to be up to your standards, then just don't do it. I think a lot of people jumped right into live streaming and making anything to put online just to stay relevant. I definitely started falling into that pit a little bit. I was just kind of like posting indiscriminately on social, and for what? There's nothing to promote right now. Why am I spending so much time on there?
Ghost Funk Orchestra 10/31/19 (Photo by Justin Joffe)
Just because we're in an unprecedented time, don't sacrifice quality just for the sake of being visible. Stick to your standards.
When social media is in the mix, that becomes particularly dangerous, just the quickness and ease with which one can go live with and blast something out, almost as a release for them rather than something that's serving the project or the campaign or the larger goal.
Yeah. It gets very easy to fall into those holes, because if you create a feedback loop for yourself, you'll be like, ‘all right, people remember us, we're still, we're still relevant.’ All right, that's cool. But there's still no shows, if, in this hypothetical ,you don't have a record coming out to promote? If you can just take that time that you would spend trying to stay visible online and just work on your craft, that's time better spent.
And I'm letting you know, I say this as somebody who's figuring that out myself, because I got really anxious about making sure we were still visible and still relevant, while we're in between releases with no shows. It’s just like, ‘people need to remember, we exist.’ Oh, they do remember— they haven't forgotten because I posted two seconds ago.
There was this interesting thing that happened a few months into lockdown where there was some consensus online around the philosophy of ‘don't let people shame you for not creating.’ I liked that idea, but it also made me think of somebody like you, who is always busy working something. I can tell that just the way your brain works. But what you're saying also supports the same thing — don't just do it to do it.
Yeah, totally. To that effect, I saw a little infographic post on Instagram recently that just said, “A pandemic is not a residency.” And man, that's heavy. It's a good point. We can't be expected to be making stuff and be inspired all the time just because we're home, because we have to be here. This is, in a lot of ways, not an inspiring time. You can't fault anybody for not making anything because thinking about the gravity of everything is brutal.
Remember not to be hard on yourself when nothing clicks.
Only the French have really mastered that idea of ennui. I mean it's a French word, but that idea of creative listlessness is so French. And I don't think it's for everyone. It's a nice idea. The idea that from complete stagnancy is like born brilliance, but I don't think it always works out that way. No.
And honestly, of all the creative endeavors, I feel like the photographers have had the most moments this past year. A lot of photographers I know have found interesting ways to capture some of the fallout from the quarantine, like shuttered doors and weird signs that wouldn't have made sense a year ago, and all the protests. They’re having their moment being able to document a lot of very new and strange things, but yeah. Then the musicians were just kind of in the dog until we could perform again.
Yeah, for sure. On the flip side, a lot of photographers are show rats who were used to being at a different show every night and are really missing that community. And show rats are a community unto themselves. For many of them it often seems like a sanity thing, some natural high they’re chasing to feel OK. I worry about them the most.
Oh yeah. They are the community. It's true though because I know. I have a few friends that definitely when it came to choosing their places to live, they chose them as a place to put their head, but not to spend any time. And then when you're forced to be there every day for an entire year, it’s untenable. I knew a few folks that had to find new apartments because they they weren't living in places that were suitable for this amount of time stuck at home because they were either out at work or out at shows all the time. It's just like the home is not the place to hang out until you're forced to.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity