YOURS IN THE RANKS OF DEATH | VINYL RECORD (LP)

Ghost Funk Orchestra (GFO) returns with Yours in The Ranks of Death, their most grounded and personal collection of songs to date, a reflective and ethereal fifth full-length album that finds composer and mastermind Seth Applebaum paring down the sound and conceptual underpinnings while giving his signature grooves a cleaner pocket to glide across the turntable. Like a summer sun's rays slowly atomizing morning fog, the album brings into sharper relief the angles and crystalline figures that have made Ghost Funk Orchestra the groovy modern psychedelic soul jazz boogaloo backbone of Karma Chief Records since joining the label in 2018. "I wanted to focus more on the rhythm section... like getting the grooves to feel and letting them just exist for a while, rather than trying to bounce around," says Applebaum, whose approach nods to earlier GFO albums while refining the project's voice and sound after nearly a decade of one-man-improv headphone orchestrations and an ever-expanding palette of sounds and collaborators. While the instrumentation retains it's sultry confidence and gauzy atmosphere, the lyrics reveal the album's most confessional tones, with Applebaum offering some of his most personal writing, especially on "King of the Lower East Side," which identifies the spiritual center of both the album and the band's catalog: his late uncle Matthew, whom Applebaum describes as "an amateur poet, but dedicated to the craft" and "an influential character." Any impression that the album's sharper focus is simply an exercise in concision fades with "A Vision of Crimson," one of the longest and most ambitious songs in the Ghost Funk repertoire, a seven-minute closing opus that shapes it's strut with a gradual sweep and swirling interplay of brass and winds, marrying Return to Forever with Joe Bataan's Fania-fed soul through the blended sound only live horns in a room can provide. Zivic handles lead vocals on "Crimson," "Where Is My Love," and "Ocotillo," while Applebaum casts the album with touring musicians in mind, saying he wanted regular live singers Hartman and Zivic to feel "some kind of ownership in the project," and similarly brought in horn players who have become regular parts of the live band so they feel like more than "just hired guns for the live show." From Applebaum's mind to the mixing desk at his home studio, Yours in The Ranks of Death keeps Ghost Funk Orchestra moving forward while traveling inward, delivering introspection that is propulsive, poetic, and deeply funky.