Artist – Anup Sastry
Album – Ghost
Release Date – 22nd March, 2013
Mixed and Mastered by – Anup Sastry
Label – Independent
Anup Sastry, well most of you would know him. If you don’t then here is a quick intro – he is an audio engineer currently residing in Frederick, Maryland, USA. Apart from that he is better known as the drummer for Skyharbor and very recently for legendary Metal guitarist – Jeff Loomis. Recently he released his own solo album, titled – Ghost (I don’t know if the name has some relation with the ghost notes technique on drums, we’ll find it out soon in an interview 😛 ). The album is quite impressive in its own rights, but certainly would not satisfy everybody’s taste.
All the guitars and bass in the tracks have been programmed, which means the album is all about the drums and more drums. Frankly, reviewing this album has been one of the most difficult tasks I’ve done lately. Being not much of a drum expert, I had to do some research on different techniques before I actually started listening to the tracks. But later on I realised it wasn’t necessary. The tracks can be broadly classified as Djent with a healthy dose of Techno sound. And when there is Djent, there always is a dash of Progressive sound that goes with the genre, which may actually be the reason why one may not want to stop listening to the album halfway through it. I may sound crazy, but there is a proper explanation for that.
The Techno sound I mentioned comes from the guitars. The guitars, as I’ve mentioned earlier, have been programmed and the patch used gives it this nice Techno feel. Whether the sound was intended or not, it went down pretty good with me and I certainly enjoyed every bit of it. Tracks like Limitless, Wastelands and Reflex are the best example. Limitless has this nice Djenty feel with some of that techno sounding breakdowns. Wastelands and Reflex, both of them have this sort of strange synthesized sound which has some alien movie like feeling. Something pretty common in trance and Techno mixes. The outro breakdown on Wastelands sounds like a Hindu tantric prayer in progress; heavy, dark and eerie. The tracks do get a little bit repetitive at times, but that’s the downside of almost every instrumental album, without vocals even The Beatles would sound repetitive.
The Progressive touch can be seen in tracks like Discovery and Crystal. Discovery is a great track, and probably the nearest to perfection. Never felt as if it was programmed! The middle part of the song, where the keys kick in, qualifies as a movie soundtrack. It is a very engaging song to say the least. Crystal on the other hand is the longest song in the album. I felt the first half was repetitive, but the second half of the song is sheer beauty. The song is like beauty meets the beast, with the perfect amalgamation of heavy riffs and the piano melody. Just in case you need a new swanky ringtone for your cell phone, I would suggest the title track – Ghost. It has this nice eerie and strange feel to it.
As mentioned before, the only instrument recorded for the album was the drums, and Anup has shown sheer prowess in that field. Be it blasting the double bass or the snare fillers, he kills it all. I was air drumming all the time without realising it, while listening to the album. It is that addictive. But the bottomline is I would have liked some real instruments used for the tracks. That way there would have been more to write about. But nonetheless, a great effort by the man; certainly earns my respect with this album.
My picks from the album –
- Crystal
- Discovery
- Limitless
Buy The Album Here and support Anup
Crystal Drum Playthrough
