Ghost Funk Orchestra with Rudy De Anda

Description

All Ages

$12 Advance/$15 Door

Doors - 7 PM

Rudy De Anda - 8 PM

Ghost Funk Orchestra - 9 PM

Ghost Funk Orchestra

Each song on Ghost Funk Orchestra’s 3rd album, A New Kind of Love, resonates like the soundtrack to a scene from an imaginary movie. The music could score a romantic drama, an action thriller, or a modern twist on a classic film noir. The spare, cascading vocals accentuate the lush instrumental orchestrations composed, performed, arranged and produced by multi-instrumentalist Seth Applebaum, whose latest brainchild was conceived and conceptualized during The Great Pause of 2020, a time of tension, bewilderment and isolation. Evoking the grooviness of an era which preceded his arrival on earth, Applebaum draws upon sonic devices of mid-century exotica and the succinct but dense arranging style of the leaders of the pop orchestras which dominated the hit parades of the 60s and early 70s. He blends impressions of this bygone era with an expression of his actual experiences as a young filmmaker coming of age in the 21st century, citing influences such as Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings and Antibalas. A New Kind of Love encompasses a reverence for the past without attempting to recreate it.

In the tradition of the “production forward” discographies of such record makers as David Axelrod and the Mizell Brothers, it’s easy to visualize Applebaum as a “mad doctor” figure, hunkered down in a studio channeling this musical representation of his inner world into the 12 compositions which make up A New Kind of Love. His writing stretches his psyche to explore a terrain in which to capture emotional notes of love going well, love gone sour, manifesting love songs based in ghostly affairs. While the studio is obviously a wondrous happy place of experimentation and creativity for Applebaum, he’s a band guy too (having actually fronted punk outfit The Mad Doctors). Applebaum has the wherewithal to bring his dreamy material to the 10 piece all star Ghost Funk Orchestra, leading them to breathe life into this sophisticated body of work which heralds the celebration of a new era for the group. Ghost Funk Orchestra will be touring in concert this summer and fall to celebrate the release of A New Kind of Love, an album which is sure to stand the test of time.

Ghost Funk Orchestra began as bandleader Seth Applebaum’s lo-fi recording project in 2014. They have been playing as part of New York City’s psych-rock and soul scenes, but have only just recently released their debut album, A Song for Paul. Five years might seem like a long time from a band’s conception to the release of their debut album, but A Song for Paul is clearly worth the wait.

While Ghost Funk Orchestra and A Song for Paul is Applebaum’s project, he uses nearly 20 musicians to realize his vision. The group consistently find the groove while successfully negotiating Applebaum’s detours into some combination of jazz/prog/psych rock that occurs in nearly every tune.

A Song for Paul is dedicated to Applebaum’s grandfather, Paul Anish, whose love of music was a huge influence on young Seth. But the spirit of another great music lover/music maker hovers over A Song for Paul as well, and that would be Isaac Hayes.

The Hayes connection is obvious in two specific songs. “Walk Like a Motherfucker”, the first full track after a short album-opening introduction, establishes the stoned 1970s funk feel that dominates the album. Although there are no backup singers telling vocalist Laura Gwynn to shut her mouth when she gets to that certain word. It seems likely Black Moses would have approved. And then, of course, another track is titled, “Isaac Hayes”, though it does not appear to be literally about Isaac Hayes.

Rudy De Anda

Born in the 1980’s in Mexico and brought to California, Rudy de Anda’s debut solo album, “Tender Epoch” (2020) is a love letter to the long historical lineage of rock ‘n’ roll music interpreted through his multicultural lens. “I write my own history; I don’t want to be defined by defined by any one scene,” De Anda proclaims about his personal journey, and his ability to adapt and flit between cities and cultures is part of the reason L.A. Record has called his sound “deliberately difficult to categorize, familiar but novel at the same time.”

De Anda’s origin story has more locations than most and the staging is a perilous task: his childhood in Compton, his move to Long Beach, then a few months in Mexico, then back to the States.As an adult, he had a solo trip to Chile to see El Guincho’s show, a trip that meant so much to him that he realized the profound impact Latin music has on his adult life.

Amidst incessant moves, one constant in De Anda’s history was the omnipresent soundtrack in his Hispanic home: from rock and bossa nova, to crooners, ballads and even traditional Mexican music. These sounds of his roots and the angst of the punk bands he embraced as a teenager would soon intertwine harmoniously.

The most influential figure in De Anda’s storied upbringing was without a doubt Ikey Owens of The Mars Volta and Jack White’s band. The late, great Grammy-winning producer struck a friendship with De Anda early on, when he was a teenager to whom Owens would give vinyls and tickets to shows. Owens took a young De Anda under his wing and invited him into his world and into his studio. This is where De Anda began to piece together a solo record, on his mentor’s 8-track, which for the first time felt more personal in execution, and tackled the intimacy and romanticism of generations of the artist’s past, while still employing the scrappy punk rock attitude he has always placed first and foremost in his music and life’s work.

Since 2005, De Anda has played thousands of concerts in various musical projects, but with “Tender Epoch,” which was the first album he recorded under his own name, he clearly found his own voice, with a lot of stories to highlight. This is exquisitely crafted pop, with universal messages of heartbreak and loss that are still appropriate if played at full speed on the freeway in the coastal sun. Carving his own path through a wild ride that just won’t seem to let up, De Anda refuses to get comfortable or comfortable, and instead has created a classic album that will undoubtedly set a standard for songwriting in the future.

Date & Time

Tue, May 2, 2023 7:00 PM - 11:00 PM

Venue Details

Square Cat Vinyl

1054 Virginia Avenue
Indianapolis, Indiana 46203

Square Cat Vinyl