Ghia - Down At The Hilton (7")

We are are proud to present the second release by Ghia on our label. The first single is sold out for a while and already became a collectible item. Now we present a piece from Ghia’s past – a very limited single with two unreleased recordings from 1985: At The Hilton. But this is just the beginning of a series of more unissued songs by the band. Two albums are currently in the works – and there will be more material to follow. For now, here is what label founder Günter Stöppel a.k.a. John Raincoatman says about the project, about the complete recordings of Ghia: “What you hear now is the beginning of one of the most exciting musical adventures I have been going through in my life as a music lover, researcher, dj, reissue producer and label manager. It was easy for me (and to most of you, I guess) to fall in love with “What’s Your Voodoo?”. It was the first track I ever heard by Ghia, it came out in 1991 together with the equally great “You Won’t Sleep On My Pillow”. But aside from the pure magic that these songs had, you could hear that they were extremely well made, professionally recorded, unique, and very mystic. These tracks weren’t recordings by some beginners. The songs were downtempo synth pop, almost trip-hop – but you could hear that there was some groove, warmth and irresistible musicality rarely heard in pop music at that time. I really wondered where this came from. For the past three years I’ve been asking Ghia every once in a while about further recordings. Lutz Boberg and Frank Simon, the two original band members who later joined with Lisa Ohm as a singer, always were communicative, friendly and interested in releasing more music. But at the same time nothing really happened. Accept for a bunch of newer demo tracks they offered on their Bandcamp page for a while, I never was able to hear anything more. I was mainly asking for master tapes to have better quality of the songs from Bandcamp and they just said, they didn’t have anything and everybody else they knew also didn’t have anything. Anyway, a few month ago, I suprisingly received a picture by email. A photo showing a box of 11 demo tapes by Ghia with basically all tracks they ever recorded. I couldn’t believe my eyes! I asked: “are all these tapes full length?” “Yes”, they said, “this is our complete archive”. After a few complications the package with the cassettes finally arrived in Berlin. I didn’t really know what to expect. Everything was taped chronologically, the first cassette included early recordings from 1984 and 1985. I put it in my tape deck and I couldn’t believe what I heard. It started with a minimal electro funk track, the next track was 80s funk with rap vocals, and then came a track entitled “Down At The Hilton” – what a shock that was! This was EASILY the best Balearic jazz funk track I had ever heard. The warm sound, the melodies, the drum computer beats, the solos, everything was almost too unreal to believe. I really didn’t understand why Boberg and Simon never considered that some of their early works could be of interest to other people. But hey simply thought of it as some sort of learning curve remnants or simply forgot that the music existed. I continued to listen and I must admit that my eyes got wet a bit for a couple of times. There was more to hear from their jazz funk past, it was too good to be true for a music enthusiast like me – funky grooves on jazzy electro beats, fast synthesizer solos, brilliant guitar sounds. Another track blew my mind at the end of the side A: “Curacao Blue”. Again, we get some balearic feelings and sounds, a well arranged song, electro-ish beats, a long enduring keyboard solo in a Bob James kind of mood. But it was just so much better than all of the rare fusion and contemporary jazz albums I had bought in the past years… there was so much musicality and beauty.” The story goes on – but we are going to end it here for now. Once you hear the songs we are sure that you’ll agree that the music by Ghia needs to be heard and shared with the world. We are happy that the vinyl single “At The Hilton” is available in just a couple of weeks. It will feature the afore mentioned two tracks, both recorded in 1985 in their homestudio in Bielefeld. This will be followed by a completely instrumental full length jazz funk album to be released end of the year. Then comes a full length vocal album with songs recorded at their peak of productivity from ca. 1987 to 1991 with Lisa Ohm which became the perfect counterpart to their music. We can’t wait! Can you? The time is now for Ghia.