Ghostships by Ziko

Ziko's debut album Ghostships is the sound of a convergence resulting in something new and unfamiliar. An album of dynamic light and shade, it accurately represents how Ziko hear, write, and play music: without so much as a backwards glance at where they came from, or a sideways look at what other bands are doing.

The title of Ghostships' abbreviated album-opener offers a clue to those who wish to read between the lines: Something's Happening.

At times - notably in the first half of Ghostships - you'll get the band's uniquely-skewed perspective on song-based writing, which balances a tuneful immediacy with intricate harmonic twists. On songs such as Gwee Gwaa and Needle In A Haystack, the rhythmic groove of bassist Richie 'Mr President' Setford and drummer Kris Baudry are the modern funk'n'soul bedrock underpinning the dual (and dueling) melodic directions of 'Dr.' Nick Boyle's keyboard swirls and the textured guitar work and artfully-charged vocals of Simon Turner. But that's not the whole picture at all.

While these shorter explorations may evoke the parallel-universe, progressive pop-world unlocked by acts such as Radiohead and Maps, by the time the whooshing synths and fuzz bass-line of the mini-epic Little Man With A Big Job To Do arrive, it signals a headlong dive into a topographic ocean and a different mindspace altogether. Here, and on similarly-expansive tracks like When The Fever Dissipates and For The Faint Hearted, Ziko enter a musical landscape where there may well be signposts erected by post-rock, prog, and electronic epics, but the route they travel is one of their own calculations.

Avoiding indulgent jamming and repetitive motifs, Ziko produce music which is neither over-familiar nor overly-arty: accessible and rather thrilling.

Ghostships is the kind of album which opens doors and raises possibilities, and has little to do with sums or parts. While Ziko is a band who undertake the same stuff as many others - that is, write, record, and play live - it is a rare group indeed who arrive with an album that feels simultaneously like both a starting point and a destination. Ghostships manages to demonstrate that wherever you might have come from, fresh ideas and approaches can take you somewhere unexpected.

Ziko are an Auckland quartet.

Simon Turner
Kris Baudry
Richie Setford
Nick Boyle

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