When one thinks of a ghost, there\u2019s an understanding that the figure represents a being that was once living but now continues to exist in the ether, on another plane. Seth Applebaum\u2019s Ghost Funk Orchestra switches that script: when the \u201cgroup\u201d began, it wasn\u2019t a group at all; it was a solo recording project. But New York-based Applebaum brought that project into the three-dimensional world, and today Ghost Funk Orchestra is a live psychedelic soul juggernaut.<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/10\/GFO_Seth_Applebaum.jpg\")
Seth Applebaum spent most of his twenties fronting and playing guitar in punk and garage rock bands. \u201cI got my feet wet playing live and touring,\u201d he says. But years of intense gigging left him feeling burnt out, so he decided to launch a project that would take him back to his roots. \u201cI grew up as a jazz and funk nerd,\u201d he explains with a chuckle. \u201cSo I wanted to take some time and make recordings that got me back to that.\u201d<\/p>\n
The brief Applebaum gave himself was simple enough: \u201cI wanted to make recordings of stuff that would have no business in the bands I was playing with,\u201d he says. \u201cIt was really an outlet for me to keep [that music] alive.\u201d His aims for the music extended no further than that kind of modest-scale self expression. \u201cIt was purely meant to be [just] me screwing around with tape machines.\u201d<\/p>\n
Those initial home studio recordings still had elements of his more recent past. \u201cThey were rough and guitar-forward,\u201d Applebaum says, \u201cbut they were exploring the jazz-funk side of things.\u201d He made a few EPs of his original music, handling songwriting, arrangement, production and playing nearly all of the instruments. \u201cI did have a few collaborators, mostly on vocals,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
Shared with friends, those recordings got a positive reaction. Eventually, Applebaum recalls, he \u201cthrew them up on Bandcamp and didn\u2019t do much else with them.\u201d That could have been the end of the story, but in short order he began receiving messages. More and more people heard his home recordings and asked when he was going to put a band together and bring this music to live performance.<\/p>\n
Applebaum\u2019s music as Ghost Funk Orchestra was informed by a heady mix of \u201870s funk, psychedelic rock, soul jazz and more. A live project would require highly skilled musicians who could realize his carefully-developed arrangements while bringing the interactive energy that can only come from live performance. Tentatively at first, Applebaum attempted to create a living, breathing version of the music he had been making at home. \u201cIt took a lot of trial and error to figure out what the live band was supposed to look and sound like,\u201d he admits.<\/p>\n
But once he got the mix right, Ghost Funk Orchestra was born as a live, performing unit, with a lineup ranging from eight to 12 musicians. And while it had been something of an afterthought, the live band yielded an unexpected dividend. \u201cThe momentum from playing live shows kept the recording-project side moving forward,\u201d Applebaum says. \u201cIt became a cycle, and a kind of all-consuming creative monster.\u201d<\/p>\n
Live onstage, Ghost Funk Orchestra does more than re-create the studio recordings, now numbering eight albums, four EPs and a string of singles. And that\u2019s by design, Applebaum says. \u201cI arrange the music differently; the live version of the band is a more energetic, amped-up experience than the recordings.<\/p>\n
On record, GFO can explore the subtleties within a sultry and cinematic track like \u201cAchluo\u201d from 2024\u2019s A Trip to the Moon<\/i>. \u201cI like to provide a lot of \u2018ear candy\u2019 for the headphone listener,\u201d Applebaum says. \u201cSome songs that I\u2019ve recorded, I have no real intention of ever playing live.\u201d But some of those cuts have found their way onto film soundtracks. \u201cOur instrumental songs often get licensed for use in surf and snowboard movies, and in extreme sports documentaries,\u201d he says. And despite its title, GFO\u2019s slinky and hypnotic 2018 track, \u201cWalk Like a Motherfucker\u201d has found its way into several films.<\/p>\n
In front of an audience, the sassy and kinetic \u201860\u2019s rave jazz found on cuts like Ghost Funk Orchestra\u2019s \u201cWhere To?\u201d is the preferred approach. Since becoming a live act, GFO has played major festivals \u2013 Montreal Jazz, Telluride Jazz, Idaho\u2019s indie-rock Treefort and others \u2013 and secured high-profile spots on bills with fellow groundbreaking yet hard-to-classify acts like Brazil\u2019s Os Mutantes, Marco Benevento and The Nude Party. The band\u2019s current tour itinerary takes it back and forth across the North American continent.<\/p>\n
Seth Applebaum feels that with Ghost Funk Orchestra, he has (perhaps unintentionally) struck upon a perfect balance. The albums, EPs and singles give him the creative space to express his musical ideas, and the live band brings those ideas to the stage in a thrilling context. Ultimately, though, it\u2019s all about one thing: \u201cI\u2019m just trying to make music that I would want to listen to,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When one thinks of a ghost, there\u2019s an understanding that the figure represents a being that was once living but now continues to exist in the ether, on another plane. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28318,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[31,41,42,57,69],"tags":[5532,5531],"class_list":["post-28317","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-funk","category-interview","category-jazz","category-psych","category-soul","tag-ghost-funk-orchestra","tag-seth-applebaum","cat-31-id","cat-41-id","cat-42-id","cat-57-id","cat-69-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28317","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28317"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28317\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28319,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28317\/revisions\/28319"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28317"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28317"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28317"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}