Ben Pirani & Ghost Funk Orchestra Modern Scene - Can't Get Out Your Own Way

No global pandemic can dull the drive of musicians to create. At the onset of the Covid-19 crisis artists everywhere found themselves pondering what music making looks like under quarantine. In the absence of touring and in-person recording, New York based Colemine label mates Ben Pirani and Ghost Funk Orchestra prove the spirit of collaboration can flourish under social distancing with the help of file sharing. And so the idea to exchange remixes of existing material revealed itself. Each musician recording their parts from home and zapping them across the city to be assembled.

Modern Scene from Ghost Funk Orchestra's 2019 LP A Song For Paul is reimagined top to bottom by Pirani as psychedelic soul jazz with baroque flourish. 4 bars of lonesome guitar give way to a solitary sax building with lush strings before laying way back to give room to the original vocal. A fried guitar solo follows before a spectral drum machine arrives to support the slow crescendo with layers upon layers of instruments that all at once disappear before the listener knows what they are listening to. Seth Applebaum tapped several dozen musicians to assemble his Ghost Funk Quarantine Orchestra. Applebaum's arrangement of Can't Get Out Your Own Way from Ben Pirani's 2018 Colemine LP How Do I Talk To My Brother draws on alternative harmonic dimensions via instrumentation not typically associated with Soul music. Swirling strings, bold brass punchy piano and even tuba punctuate Pirani's snarling vocal. The overall effect it that of a large ensemble playing in one place. Wishful thinking.