To Bury A Ghost was the music project of Jonathan Stolber. It’s best described as an alternative rock or art rock outfit.
I got to know Jon through a shared interest in effects pedals and home recording. We kept appearing on the same review blogs and local music broadcasts and eventually caught up to perform together. His band had just released their debut EP The Hurt Kingdom and he was looking to take the songs on the road. I performed guitar, keyboard, glockenspiel and backing vocals in the live lineup. The poster above was for our short tour as a four piece band. The gigs were loud and fierce! It would be good to do this again sometime.
After the tour had finished we set to recording some alternate versions of the EP songs and demoing some new stuff. The demo we set loose into the world was called Dancing With Epileptic and can be heard/downloaded still at bandcamp.
We still hang out and tinker with writing and recording sounds. Jons latest solo project is called The Holy Road and is well worth your time to give a listen too.
This is a hard one to share. I had such high hopes for a future with this band, but it wasn’t to be. We had an albums worth of songs rehearsed and tight…but it lasted two gigs and one home recording demo session. We were all busy with other projects and real life stuff that it sadly never took off.
The project had the psychedelia of Enki and the rough edges of Snakeman. We were a four piece built around the songwriting and guitar/saxophone playing of Kirsty Wilkins (The Lunar Trixies). Featuring members of Presley Johnson (Alex George on drums) , Enki (me on bass), and Jontys Jam Night regular, Mario on guitar it was a bit of a Northampton supergroup back in 2014.
We at times sounded like The Doors, Jefferson Airplane, Jimi Hendrix…anything with that late 60’s psych edge. I played a home made fretless bass for this band that was named Ragwitch.
Some of the songs would go on to be performed by new band The Ginhouse Gypsies, Muddy Boots and The Lunar Trixies. All that remains of our short time as a band are a bunch of photographs, one of the coolest gig posters I’ve ever been attached to, and a live recording that I shall share snippets of in due time.
The debut album from The Silent Committee has now been fully remastered for better audio quality.
The reissue also boasts an additional SIXTEEN songs on top of the original release.
It is available to buy/stream on Bandcamp (best price! hint, hint. It’s also Friday!)
It will also soon be available to stream on Spotify, Apple Music, Tidal, YouTube etc. and to purchase from the usual digital storefronts. (Expected 18/08/2023)
Chris Fordham writes of the reissue:
The debut album by The Silent Committee was first released in 2008. I had only just begun to make recorded music at home and the mixes and quality of sound in these songs demonstrates some of that youthful naivety and creative fun. I didn’t own a music interface of any kind, just a cheap four channel mixer and the microphone socket leading into a £5 primitive DAW software. It certainly started a fair run of producing instrumental music and meeting lots of like-minded musicians online. I think as I set about the original recording I was listening to so much ambient and minimalist music that I sought to emulate it as best I could. Inspiration from the likes of Brian Eno, Penguin Cafe Orchestra, Sigur Ros and Nine Inch Nails are obviously all here and I could only hope to have distantly reached at brushing the quality of those performers.
The original files for the songs are LONG gone so a full remix of the album is sadly not possible, but what I could do was revise the final mastering. More access to mastering software and hardware has resulted in this! The speakers no longer pop and hiss, hi-hats don’t pierce your eardrums and things generally sound a little more rounded.
The rolig. ep that preceded the album launch was merely a collection of live guitar loops and soundscapes; I’ve bundled them into the re-release, again with similar remastering touches to the main album. There are a few unheard things and other polished up sound experiments from the time included here to complete a document of what was happening with me musically in ’08. This is how a ten track album, becomes twenty-six on the remaster!
It was fun to revisit and I believe it’s certainly wise to retrace your steps to where you come from and think about where it’s led.
*If you visit each songs link separately on the bandcamp album page, I offer a little insight into instruments, techniques, influences and background to each song in turn.
CF 24/06/2023
1.
Theme for The Missing 01:31
2.
Finale 02:26
3.
Reminisce 02:45
4.
Vio 03:04
5.
Low 04:20
6.
Portrait Of A Girl In Glass 02:53
7.
Melancholy March 04:27
8.
Outside 02:41
9.
Fainter 02:40
10.
The Last High 02:43
11.
hæglátur (rolig ep) 03:00
12.
vielä (rolig ep) 02:00
13.
kyrrð (rolig ep) 03:00
14.
linişte (rolig ep) 03:00
15.
安生 (rolig ep) 01:00
16.
A Vespers Lullaby 02:43
17.
Elegy 04:52
18.
Heroes Lament 04:08
19.
Morning Haze/Breaking Hearts and Shattered Dreams (4-track demo) 05:40
The Silent Committee released the debut album ‘The Missing’ on August 3rd 2008. Back then it was available using a PayPal link to MySpace that afforded either the purchase of a home made CD-R package or the mp3 and image files sent over mediafire…Things have definitely improved.
The debut album was removed from Bandcamp at the end of June as it has now been completely remastered and MASSIVELY expanded. More news on that on Friday (when it is re-released, improved and better than ever.)
Whilst digging around for content I stumbled across my old vimeo account and was delighted to find the viral video clip I’d made to promote the album. It’s mysterious to the extent that if you hadn’t stumbled across the project already…you’d have no idea what it was about. Ambition was high back in 2008.
Check back on Friday for details of the reissue. If you are wanting to keep up with newer video work then please follow the vimeo account, or subscribe to the mailing list on here as I’ll always share the content to both sites.
In August of 2012 The Snakeman 3 set up in a warehouse with a bunch of microphones and a desktop PC to demo a bunch of songs. The EP was set to be called ‘Fry Your Mind’ and featured some very psychedelic artwork. Four of the songs have survived the session as multi-tracks but were ultimately never released. Studio engineers we were not back then, so the recordings were very much demos. They sounded good enough for us to share our sound of the time though. I reckon with a bit more time and focus we could have completed this EP quite effectively. For all the years of being in The Snakeman 3, and in all the guises that band took on, the period of time where we were recording and performing this EP were my personal highlights.
Line up changes in the band occurred after the summer and we set about recording the songs in a different way. The sound became more raucous and rough, DIY and punk after months of gigs in the new lineup. Everything was committed live to a 4-track reel-to-reel recorder in the same warehouse space as ‘Fry Your Mind’. Those later recordings would later be released as the album ‘We’re Better Than You’.
Aside from these photos and other rehearsal shots from the time, the only evidence of the EP ever existing is this video featuring the song ‘Memphis’. This was a popular song in the live set right up until the end of my time with the band – how long can you hold that E chord in the post chorus Kenny?! Strangely this song never made the album. I might mix the multitracks properly at some point.
Chris Fordham Music 