Fighting the Fire: Talking With Pittsburgh’s Race the Ghost

Mark Mangini

Race the Ghost is a band comprised of two sets of brothers: Frank and Mike Salati, and Vin and Ben Bruni. The boys grew up playing music together, and inevitably formed a band. Excursions into the hallow land of four-track recording planted a musical seed in these four young men and resulted in some over-saturated tapes that will live forever in the band’s closet.

The boys graduated high school and went their separate ways. A few years later, their love of playing together reunites them; Mike, conveniently, with an Audio Engineering degree in hand. Before they knew it, a self-titled debut album was recorded and self-released, and the band was off and running. What set Race the Ghost apart from their contemporaries was the professional sound quality of their record. Every note Frank wrung from the neck of his gently weeping guitar sounded exactly the way it needed to sound. Ben’s bass and Mike’s drums comprised a pristine rhythm section, while Vin’s vocals soared in the Robertsmithosphere, texturing the landscape from high above. All parts, due to Mike’s engineering, blended smoothly together into the sound of four men who grew up playing music together.

Then came a set of e.p.’s—2006’s In the Drink and 2007’s Devil Got My Radio. These two releases upped the ante, both stylistically and sonically. While “The Numbers” from In the Drink speaks to the confusions of growing up in the world (“and the numbers add up to be too much”), “Daggers” from Devil stomps in a way unprecedented in their previous releases. These show that while the band’s songwriting and technical abilities continue to grow, Mike’s engineering skills develop right along with them; quite a nice situation for a band to be in.

Which leads me to the present moment, listening to an advanced copy of the new record, My First Crown. In keeping with their inclinations to grow with each successive release, this new record features a Race the Ghost that plays with a sense of urgency unlike anything they’ve ever recorded before. The album’s title song begins with some muted notes plucked from a guitar. As soon as some familiarity sets, the band breaks into a march and the room changes colors as a phased guitar warps the left speaker while Vin sings from the right side “...these are not hesitation marks.” Soon Frank’s atmospheric guitar brings the intro melody back just long enough for recognition, only to be pummeled again by Mike’s marching snare. And so concludes, in under three minutes, my introduction to the new record. I’ll let Vin take it from here.

TNY: So what have you guys been up to?

Vin: We have been refining and recording eight songs for a new album. And, well, my wife and I had a baby girl during the recording period, so we all took advantage of the time to attend to our friends and families. We had sustained a pretty rigorous gig schedule up until it was time to sit down and track the songs. All the while, we honed in on the frames of new songs that occurred almost spontaneously between shows. We knew that we wanted to strike a balance in our lives and respond to these newer creations in a direct and intentional manner. All this being said, we are now revving up for a big push of the record release and a new attack of the scene.

TNY: Man, that's great Vin—congratulations! Can you give me some details about the new record? Any new sounds, different directions, fresh ideas?

Vin: All of the songs are as straightforward as possible. They seem to be in line with the continuous dialogue of our lives as artists, a band, as part of humanity. We don't claim that there are any new ideas, other than that we took great effort not to cover up the simplest but most essential components of the songs...basically the songs have been painstakingly carried from live performances to the studio. We have been attempting to grab what possible visceral response a listener may experience upon first hearing the music and arrange the song to support that
experience.

TNY: I think the last sentence is really interesting. Can you expand a bit upon this concept?

Vin: If the first two measures of a song, (let's say it is the bass and drums as intro) makes you want to nod your head to the beat, we wanted to build the song in such a way that makes you move your body with such tenacity that you can actually feel your gray matter swishing around in your skull. Now sometimes the recorded version (the recording process itself can diminish one's ability to translate such fleshy expressions) lacks the energy of a live performance. The same thing happens with any important communications: from a lover to the beloved, a child asking a question, a stranger asking for help. A person's experience of these are quite different from their re-telling of the story to a friend. So even though we knew the songs had impact when we wrote them and we felt it, the key was--at least we desired to--carry it over to every part of the recording and every subsequent performance. But it takes concerted effort. If a particular track begins by abrasively demanding the listener's attention, we aimed at keeping the whole song.

TNY: How about the lyrical content of this recording? As you said before there's a lot going on in your lives, is that stuff seeping into the songs? What is the writing process like now?

Vin: As far as the writing process, it has always been that the music and general melody are discovered first, and the lyrics often develop out of an instinctual response to the movements caused by the music. It seems that we as a band nurture the songs that disturb or nurture something in us, and the discovery of the lyrics are no different. I have always tried to be as honest with, and about, my lyrics as possible. Sometimes I compose and order the words that develop out of the music. Sometimes I have to interpret the words and phrases that are being pushed out of the music. We make jokes about some of those and dump them. Others end up translating the song for us, explaining the music to us, even enlightening our understanding of life and its events. In any case, recognition of meaning and theme, story and motivation, is often a gift we get later in the life of the song, as is true for much of our lives. The value of life is more fully grasped later, after an experience, unfortunately.

TNY: It’s crazy that you just said that about lyrics—that you have to “interpret the words and phrases that are being pushed out of the music.” This sentiment seems to be popping up a lot in my life lately. So can you give us a few last specifics about the new record?

Vin: So the record is called My First Crown. I suppose some of the ideas/themes/motifs that float through the record are relatively basic: gaining and losing control, assuming and disregarding responsibility, use and abuse of power, poverty and abundance, and of course, a little bit of guilt. Every parent who even tries to raise a child properly knows that one's entire worldview changes (and most would say for the better). We are built to do this, but the world is hostile, or can be hostile, or at least we see the hostility first, then the beauty. We must recognize the responsibility for each other or, well...we're fucked….So, where was I going with this? Oh yeah, this record is substantial, the songs are valuable, the lyrics are "responsible." The first track is called “I Heard There Was a Fire.” It is a recounting of the biggest fire we have fought yet, a combination of details and emotional response, of brotherhood on the inside of the scene, of the fascinating danger and power of the fire. After we were working about ten hours into it (less than half the total time) someone said that there was an arsonist to blame. The buildings were empty, it was below freezing, the flames were enormous, unimaginable.

 

 

 

Mark Mangini is an editor at The New Yinzer.