SHAM AN – GHOSTS [FREE DOWNLOAD]

Ahh… so we meet again, SHAM AN! Last time we heard from this Montpellier-dwelling producer, he was vibing out an unofficial Burial remix, which I said was basically "fluidity chopped and punctuated with a slo-house beat comprising of cricket-like percussion snapping snares and erratic-heartbeat kicks." You can imagine it, right? Dark and ambient. Previous to this, if you're interested in looking into Mr SHAM AN's backstory, he remixed a song, 'Voices Of War' on fellow Frenchman Tealeaf's Yugen EP.

But now! But now: we have NOT a remix from Pierre-Emmanuel Récio (the real name of this musicmaker), but an entirely original song, 'Ghosts'.

As neutrally spooky and expansively ethereal as you'd expect a true ghost to be, the track is firstly flooded with subtle waves of ambient, fog-like synth; the first spotting of a ghost, when your blood chills and your spine seems to want to jump from your trembling body. But soon wisps of synth melody make their way in softly, combined with heartwarming strings that send an all-clear signal – the phantom is not as terrifying as you thought it was; in fact, it's speaking pleasantly to you. At 1:40, all sense of fear dissipates with an almost comically wilting pitch shift.

The rest of the song rolls trappishly with the bright percussion that'd been the order of the day from the beginning, rollicking hi-hats and shining cymbals, which in the first half combined with kicks to provide dynamic pulses of energy behind the song's grey, misty exterior. There's one particular word that I'd describe this song as, and that's "pure". Pure. It sounds pure. Refreshing. Well-balanced. Not too dark and spooky but not utterly euphoric either; it harbours a relaxed spirit of clarity.

This was premiered exclusively on a site that doesn't even exist yet, Mayne – a France-based (and perhaps France-centric, too, but who knows) "MUSIC SHARING PLATFORM / BLOG / INDEPENDENT LABEL". Despite not having an actual www site, there is a SoundCloud, Twitter & Facebook account with which you may get acquainted if you feel like it.

• Download this brush with the afterlife from Mayne's FB page (cliquez!)

---

---

Like Sham an on Facebook
Listen to Sham an on SoundCloud
Hear more Sham an on Bandcamp
Follow Sham an on Twitter
Check Sham an on Tumblr

---

---

BURIAL – HIDERS (SHAM AN REMIX)

Taking the highly textured and lonely euphoria of the stunningly waterfallish Burial original 'Hiders' as his basic foundation, French maker of music SHAM AN (shaman) offers up an equally stunning remix. Who is SHAM AN? He is from Montpellier, his real name is Pierre–Emmanuel Récio, he makes good sounds. Done. Next.

But seriously like, this is a great song. It might as well be an original song. In fact, I bet many artists or people or whoever would get pretty angsty about unofficial remixes so maybe SHAM AN should've just called it something else for a title and said "YO HERE'S AN ORIGINAL" because, aside from some sampling, a similar vibe and rhythm, it's different. But this is semantics or maybe even just a pale rambling excuse for semantics, not music, and I'm sorry about that. Just listen up to some MUSIC.

It's a gradual climb from the dark ambience of the beginning of this track, but soon we are into the flesh of it, the rich portions of sound that thicken into a kind of heavy water; fluidity is the name of the game here, fluidity chopped and punctuated with a slo-house beat comprising of cricket-like percussion snapping snares and erratic-heartbeat kicks. It's a stream of sounds, a stream of noises, artificial and natural, beautifully half-preserving the samples from Burial's original in muffled ancient farflung capsules opening up and effusing their ghostly lo-fi sounds in the tide of warm synth. There is a heartrendingly empty feeling in the track, evoking the reclusives that (maybe) inspired the name and sound of the original 'Hiders', perpetually lonesome yet in that isolation is a fragile beauty kept alive by the joy of experience and life without too much involvement, and a swirling sweeping sadness due to that lack of interactivity, that lack of touch, that seekerless will-less attitude, ever-hiding. Or something.

• So… that was nice – you can download it HERE (clickety-click)

---

---

Like SHAM AN on Facebook
Listen to SHAM AN on SoundCloud
Hear more SHAM AN on Bandcamp
Follow SHAM AN on Twitter
Check SHAM AN on Tumblr

---

---