Suss Ghost Box CD

Northern Spy is now proud to present this fantastic album on CD for the first time, with four never-before-heard bonus tracks. This is Ghost Box (Expanded). What would it sound like if Brian Eno had produced the Western film scores of Ennio Morricone?

We'll never know, but wer'e now a step closer thanks to Ghost Box, the debut album by SUSS, an NYC quintet whose members have worked with Lydia Lunch, the B-52s, David Bowie, John Cale, Wilco, Norah Jones, and countless others. More than a reconstruction of an imagined collaboration between Eno and Morricone, Ghost Box opens a door onto a world where ambient music and country-western make for natural bedfellows.

For Grammy-nominated multi-instrumentalist and cowpunk pioneer Bob Holmes, that connection has been hiding in plain sight for decades. Holmes views acts like Boards of Canada and My Bloody Valentine as more recent avatars of the high lonesome vibe that we tend to think of in terms of traditional roots music.

In that light, if you trace the melancholic sprawl of those acts back to Hank Williams, it almost begs the question: What is twang, anyway, if not a form of ambiance?