This whole album, though comprised of ten songs, is really one forty-minute piece. Almost no one listens that way anymore, but I hope you give it a try. Eric

Ghosts of Our Former Selves

Digital Release and limited edition vinyl

SUSPICIOUS MOTIVES RECORDScover art by Joe Wardwell

SUSPICIOUS MOTIVES RECORDS

cover art by Joe Wardwell

Tim Page, Professor of Music and Journalism, University of Southern California, Pulitzer Prize for Criticism, 1997

“The critic and professor Edward Mendelson explored the concept of the "encyclopedic novel" -- a work of fiction that combines a full range of the knowledge and beliefs of a given culture into a narrative that goes far beyond storytelling.    He named "The Divine Comedy," "Don Quixote," "Moby Dick," "Ulysses" and "Gravity's Rainbow" among several other encyclopedic novels -- books at once highly complicated and richly entertaining, melding fact, legend, parody, philosophy and everything else that fits into a creation that not only reflect their times and places but come close to epitomizing them.    

I would nominate Eric Chasalow's "Ghosts of our Former Selves" as "encyclopedic music."     I've been listening for several weeks now and compiling a list of aural "images."    At the beginning, I am reminded of Stephin Merritt singing a particularly unusual, newly unearthed score from one Renaissance or another in an ancient cathedral.     We go on to a fantastical riff on an old violin record sped up and scattered electronically.   Suddenly a solo recorder plays "The Loveliest Night of the Year" (a melody from the 1880s that became a hit for Mario Lanza, later became  "The George Washington Bridge Song" and. being out of copyright, was used extensively in films and commercials).    Somehow it is all brand new although you've heard it a thousand times..    Eric studied with Mario Davidovsky and one can discern some of the lyricism, both eerie and expansive, that informed his teacher's electronic work.   But then there is modern jazz, and something that sounds like a bleak lost track from the records David Bowie and Brian Eno made in Berlin, and then a vamp on old English folk songs.      

And yet "Ghosts of our Former Selves" is all Eric.   He is not touching all these bases to prove how smart he is or to bewilder us with sensory overdose, a la cinema verite.   Rather, they are part of the world that made him and that he has now made into something all his own.    And despite the fact that it was finished in the annus horribilis 2020, "Ghosts of our Former Selves" is often shimmeringly beautiful.  For all of its digressions, it is a markedly linear piece, replete with beginnings, middles and ends -- and even some great tunes.   This is music to sustain and challenge us during a time when we most need it. “

Credits

All lyrics and compositions © 2020 Eric Chasalow (ASCAP). Except as noted below, all performances are by Eric, including vocals, guitars, mandolin, mandola, flute, penny whistle, piano, organ, and electronic sounds. Production, engineering, and mixing by Eric.

Additional performances and technical assistance by the following friends: