Ghoul Detail - The Ghoul Box

Artist: Ghoul Detail
Release: The Ghoul Box
Label: Roil Noise Offensive
Year: 2006
Format: 5 x CDr
Tracks: 41

The Ghoul Box Set. Roil Noise Offensive’s 50th release and this is a great one. What you get is 5 ambient experimental CDr’s, 3 stickers, and 2 buttons all packaged in a nice looking cardboard case with print on the top. Each disc is individually packaged with an insert and track list in a 5x5.5" 6mil vinyl sleeve, like an individual release would. Ghoul Detail has been creating ambient and experimental sounds for over 3 years and his out put is mainly focused on war and drugs it seems. The box set comes with an insert that details the discs and the tracks, but it also has a quote by Sven Hassel from 1961. It talks about the body movers of the 2nd World War and he label’s it as the Ghoul Detail. Now I know where the name is from and it all finally makes sense.

Getting back to the music, there are a lot of samples used in these tracks. Some tracks have heavy bass lines, some have vocal samples, others have mixed clashes and scrapes, but each track carries with it his distinctive sound. If you’ve ever listened to anything by Plastikman you may know what I mean. The drone may carry throughout the entire track but all the sounds mixed in place keep you from getting board. One of my favorite tracks is on Disc Two: Track 1 "Path Of The Righteous Man", there are lots of movie samples (Taxi Driver to name one), mix with a groovy bass line and the ever present ambient push, it works well like this. Track 4, "Teratogeny" on disc 2 is probably the most interesting simply because it features Lord Greenskull. Within GD’s ambient tone there’s a hip-hop beat with Rap lyrics. When I first heard about this I didn’t know what to expect, but I’m a fan of Prefuse 73 so there’s no surprise that I actually like this track a lot. There a lot of other great tracks in this box set and what I love best is each disc seems to have a theme, could disc 5 be about Dune? Who knows, but the sounds and range of ambient tones make this something to listen to over and over again. I personal do so while reading and sometimes I’ll get surprised and look at the stereo with a smile. Out of all the disc’s I really like Disc 3: Junky, it has 4 tracks with nothing under 13 minutes and it’s the one I think defines the true sound of Ghoul Detail. So, in a nutshell, if they were sold separately some day I’d probably buy this one first. Jon knows his stuff and he deserves the title as "The Soundscape Gardener".

The only negative I have is that some of the tracks can run to long. A good example is on Disc One, Track 5 "Munch The Stinkfinger". It runs just over 13 minutes and it could have been just as well presented had it been half as short. Good drum beats with ambient movements, but it’s a bit too much for 13 minutes.

Check out the review for "Trail Of Tears", which is disc four, here.