Ghost Against Ghost are an experimental rock project in the vein of site favorites Netherlands and centers on the composers of Christopher Bono. The new song and video “Darth Mango” is GAG’s first release since 2018 and you can see it for yourself because we are premiering it below:
If you couldn’t guess, the song is about Donald J Trump. Who is no longer the president (pause for applause). For the video Bono teamed up with video artists Laskfar Vortok and Strangeloop (Flying Lotus, Brainfeeder, Erykah Badu) to showcase the dichotomy in the country between Trump’s divisiveness and the unity of the American people, juxtaposing news coverage of the former president and his team of lackeys and on the ground footage of people exercising their constitutionally guaranteed rights to petition the government for change. The video highlights the power of peaceful protests and crucial social activism moments and the role they serve in resisting oppression.
Need to know more? Here is Bono describing the song in his own words:
“At the time I had already been thinking about exploring rhythm in a heavier more intense, and early Twentieth Century classical kind of way, experimenting with rhythms energized by the music of Stravinsky, Bartok and others, as a driving force for the structure of a Ghost Against Ghost song. I also was interested in shorter forms, as Ghost Against Ghost songs historically tend to be an extended length, usually between 8 to 15-minutes. I thought to myself, ‘Let’s do a 3.5 minute ‘pop’ song’. Of course, as with anything Ghost Against Ghost, it’s not an up the middle kind of pop song. The music was meant to express some very challenging emotions about the state of our world and reflects this by being abrasive, dissonant, angular, and very dense.”
It’s a little odd for Bono to be releasing a political song as making statements of this kind are generally not something he does with his music, but 2020 just kind of brought it out of him…
“In my early twenties I was inspired and driven to write activist music. I starting out pursuing a music career as a lyric driven singer-songwriter very inspired and influenced by artists like Neil Young, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen and Pink Floyd. When I began Ghost Against Ghost in 2008, interestingly enough, the first album (which I never completed) was a double length concept album narrating a dystopian American future. The central theme focused on a the runaway future of a country and world driven by crass capitalism and controlled by a totalitarian head of state. Not too far from where we’ve landed 12 years later.”
“I soon put Ghost Against Ghost aside for five years to focus on several classical projects. When I revived the project in 2013 the themes present in the new material focused on metaphysical topics and dark romanticism. With the writing and release of Darth Mango, It’s fascinating to see Ghost Against Ghost return to those original themes of social commentary and political dystopia, however much I wish the circumstances had not driven me here.”
Though Bono often collaborates with friends and talented musicians, this track was performed and produced in true 2020 COVID fashion, in complete isolation. After 2 years of several collaborative projects, Christopher was inspired to revisit solo production, so he played all instruments himself, including drums, bass, piano, synths, vocals and electronics.
On the subject matter of his new video, Bono explains:
“We wanted to delineate, in condensed fashion, the tumult of The Trump Administration disaster. The video for Darth Mango exists to give shape and sense to how cruel and unusual this approach to governance is. But because of the a barrage of disturbing video material, we also attempted to show, in counterbalance to the negativity, the societal backlash to corruption in government as it has manifested in The Women’s March movements, the student-led Climate Strike movements, the Black Lives Matter movements (in particular the responses to the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor) and the student-led March for Our Lives, which came in the wake of the Parkland School Shooting. By drawing on the frenetic energy and powerful lyrical content of Ghost Against Ghost’s music, we operated under the assumption that there is truly strength in our collective unity in the face of such terrible governmental designs, and we wanted the video to exemplify that.”
You can buy the track and throw a few bucks Bono’s way here.
