Sea Ghost makes a proper debut

In September 2014, Marietta-based “ghost-punk” foursome Sea Ghost caught the world’s attention with a fluke Internet hit called “Running Away.” The group had recorded just two songs when singer/rapper iLoveMakonnen tweeted out a general call asking for bands to send music his way for a potential collaboration. Makonnen dug their sound and soon made his way to singer and keyboard player Carter Sutherland’s parents’ home to record. “I emailed him almost as a joke, and then he came over with all of these guys from FADER, and they put it in print,” Sutherland says. “It was weird. We hadn’t played any shows yet, and all of these people started talking to me about working with our band. But we hadn’t figured anything out. We didn’t even know what we wanted to do,” he adds. “So we didn’t put anything out for a while.”

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This all changes on Sat., Oct. 24, when Sutherland — along with Brandon Chester (guitar), Jonathan Morningstar (drums), and Jay Harris (bass) — celebrates the release of Sea Ghost’s proper debut album, SG, with a show at WonderRoot. Sutherland insists that the album’s title is not the band’s initials. What the letters really stand for, however, is something he’s keeping a secret. At any rate, the band self-recorded the album’s nine songs. Ariel Silva, better known as SenseiATL, who has produced Awful Records affiliates such as Pyramid Quince and LuiDiamonds, handled mixing duties. CDs are available via Athens-based Marching Banana Records. Tapes are also available from Teen Sleuth Cassettes.

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On Oct. 1, Stereogum premiered a rough, unmastered cut of the album’s opening number, “Cowboy Hat.” The song is an excellent primer to Sea Ghost’s twee and charming sound which hangs in the balance of high-energy melancholy and lo-fi exuberance. “I just made up my own genre,” Sutherland says. “I want to say ‘ghost pop-punk,’ but that’s too many words. The point of a genre shouldn’t be to describe something, but to make something new. Maybe when we record another album we’ll come up with another genre.”

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The Phoenix Festival 2015 is set to take place Sat., Oct. 24, at the Wherehouse at 55 Ormond St. S.E. This Deer Bear Wolf-curated day, dedicated to celebrating homegrown art and music, includes performances by Jared Pepper of Lily and the Tigers, Ruby Velle, Kebbi Williams & the Wolfpack, and many others. The full schedule is posted to the Phoenix Fest 2015’s Facebook page.

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In metal news, black metal act Wormreich returns to the Basement on Tues., Oct. 20. It’s the venue where the band was scheduled to play on April 7 this year — the same day a fatal one-vehicle crash killed two members of the band, including Paul Truesdell of the band Overwhelmed. The lone new addition is Tayler Warren of Atlanta thrashers Homicidal. Stephen “Skullator” Shoemaker (guitar), an Atlanta metal fixture who co-founded seminal local thrash band Hallow’s Eve in 1983, still performs live for the band despite being confined to a wheelchair. This will be Wormreich’s second live performance since the accident, following a Sept. 26 appearance at Shadow Woods Metal Fest.

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The other band involved in the April 7 accident, Khaotika, begins a tour that same night built around an Oct. 23 appearance at San Bernadino, Calif.’s Knotfest. Atlanta-based singer Lariyah Hayes and her bandmates have a new full-length, titled The Flame Unleashed, slated for a Nov. 11 release.

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Rising hip-hop star Key! joined forces in October with ManMan Savage to release the Give Em Hell 2 mixtape. This latest round was produced by Big Emm and features contributions from Keith Ape and Tuck.

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Breathers have unveiled a cassette single via Skeleton Realm Records, featuring two new numbers, “Colored Lines” b/w “I’ll Never Know.” Both songs expand upon the lush, electronic pop the group wielded with its debut EP, Transitions, blending a robotic fascination with synthesizers and a dose of warm-blooded songcraft.

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Lee Gunselman (vocals, synthesizer, sequencing), Mike Netland (percussion, sequencing), and Jake Thomson (vocals, synthesizers) laid the blueprint for much of these sounds with previous single “Closer to the Bone” — which includes, among other things, criticism aimed specifically at MARTA. With “Colored Lines,” the group embarks on a real-time journey via Atlanta’s public transportation system, documenting every moment spent in Lindbergh Center Station limbo, and every long wait on the platform out at Five Points Station. The song is bent on illustrating the potential the train and the bus hold in improving the city’s quality of life, and the damaging effects of race and class perceptions when it comes to MARTA. Indeed, the title of the A-side, “Color Lines,” is rife with innuendo referencing both MARTA’s red, gold, blue, and green rail lines, and the systematic division of race that surrounds them.

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“I wrote ‘Colored Lines’ when I first started riding MARTA, about a year into living here,” Gunselman says. “I avoided the train. I didn’t know many people who took it. I worked in Buckhead and my car was out of commission for a time, so I had to use it. Jake lived near the Inman Park/Reynoldstown stop and I’d go to his place to work on songs. ‘Colored Lines’ is a subjective song, written from my personal experiences, but it conveys how unreliable MARTA can be. The song developed because people view it as a joke — hearing conversations from people being afraid of it expanding into their neighborhoods, bringing crime with it, which is all racially motivated,” he adds. “If people didn’t have such a negative mindset about it, more money could be pumped into it. The whole idea of Atlanta is that it used to be called Terminus because of all the trains. There is no shortage of lines here. But what’s more concerning is that traffic in this city is such a problem. It’s dangerous, it’s not good for the environment. If the train ran later and was more accessible, it would transform the city.”

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With additional reporting by Bobby Moore.