Fresh Cut: GHIBLI – ‘Clubs’
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Our favorite Canadian producer, house wizard, Ghibli is back with his third album to date. His last album, Rare Pleasures was released a little less than a year ago and was comprised entirely of YouTube samples. But, with “Clubs”, he explores his housey dance sound even further. The sounds are pounding, filtered, crunched, and still very fresh. And that’s what we’ve come to depend on from Ghibli, an ultimately new take on things. Maybe it’s something in the water up there in Edmonton, but there’s enough talent and experimentation flowing out of that place to fill half the internet.
Stream “Clubs”, and read what Ghibli had to say about the record below:
From Ghibli:
This is my third record as Ghibli in the past three years.’Pythia’ was the exploratory maiden voyage of what I could do and mold with samples from YouTube, learning literally everything along the way (including basic concepts of mixing and mastering). As I got deep into the record, I started finding myself listening to more and more house music (think Ministry of Sound, rather than K7 or R&S). Actually, I kind of become completely obsessed with house music, devoting myself to 3 year old Louis LaRoche mixes and streaming J Paul Getto videos from YouTube at all hours of the day. This laser-like obsession to radio-friendly sample-heavy house music plus any remaining experimental drive led to me making ‘Rare Pleasures’, which plays like it’s stuck in alternate-universe 1998 Europe where filter-house was on every single facet of media.
A long time passed between mentally being done with ‘Rare Pleasures’ and finishing this album. Around 9 months or so. I was really done with the whole idea of trying to blend classical music and disco samples into a perfect synthesis. The idea of trying to adhere to one major concept still kind of grosses me out. So I started working with micro-obsessions. I started listening to a lot of Todd Edwards and centuries-old choral music at the same time. I would listen to the worst-quality rips of the most beautiful disco songs from old Paradise Garage mixes. I’d watch juke and footwork dancers in clubs on mute while listening to old Gustav Mahler records stoned. These weird juxtapositions ending up being kind of fruitful, resulting in a bunch of separate suites of songs that were created one after the other. Originally they were going to be three separate EP’s released throughout the year, but unfortunately I’m super finicky and an idiot and impatient, so I started to mix all three disparate suites into one cohesive whole. The result is what you have before you, my weird neurotic conceptual album.
I really like to think that things happen in threes, so this is the last record in the past three that is going to be sample based. I’m already percolating and conceptualizing tracks for the new record, because whats the point of being happy with something if you’re not working towards something new?
