Like an alternate soundtrack to the survival-horror video game Cronos: The New Dawn, GHSTING is one of the most terrifying, yet drone out surreal nightmares that gives in the works of poetry, fiction, dark landscapes, post-apocalyptic nightmares, and set inside in a sinister Eastern-Europe hotel. This marks the first collaboration between Polish artists Alex Freiheit and Aleksandra Słyż.
Freiheit is a poet and vocalist, known for her work with the SIKSA duo. She has delved into the worlds of queer legends, feminist storytelling, and post-modern fairy tales while Słyż extracts her electronics and synths to create this dreary and uncomfortable situation that lands right in your lap. Listening to GHSTING, you feel as if you’re in a dream, you’re inside this hotel room as the two-guest let you in, revealing the stories that are unfolding in front of your very eyes.
There are moments Alex portrays as this mental patient who has escaped from the loony bin, revealing the nightmares what she went through, and the chaos that occurred behind closed doors. I had no idea on what to think of this album when I delving into the madness of Słyż’s storytelling, but I am always up for a challenge when it comes to something more Lynch-like when this album came towards me.
You feel as if you’re inside a dream, revealing the droning vibrations, the mess that some of the other guests have done to the room, the scary scenery, Alex going in a mental breakdown which is evidential on ‘Her Panties’, is quite the revelation.
Those moments where you almost feel for the characters Alex has created in the four tracks that is revealed on GHSTING. And with Słyż synths going in this Varese-like stance, crossed between Stockhausen and Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire in a darkened room, I nearly wanted to throw it away, but I couldn’t let it go because I had to keep enduring the moments that take me by surprise.
GHSTING may not be for the faint of heart, but what Słyż and Freheit have unleashed is a challenging, yet powerful and frightened releases they put out for 2025. It is frantic, unsettling, but all the while enduring you put this on. It’ll take a couple of listens to get into, but once you’re locked in the hotel room with them, there’s no turning back as you’re locked in for the sinister overtones that’s about to unfold.
