Genre-Crossing Discovery: Caught A Ghost
For Los Angeles-based songwriter and producer Jesse Nolan, his latest project, Caught A Ghost, is something of a spiritual journey and love letter to the City of Angels. Nolan’s finely tuned sound caught our ear because of a penchant to mix his childhood love for soul with a modern influence of dub step, sampling, and synths. The result is something he titles "soul step?" on the official Facebook page. The inclusion of a question mark only further confirms our suspicion that there is some genre-crossing going on here. Since forming in early 2011, Caught A Ghost has self-released a stream of songs on the Internet and played various local shows around Los Angeles. They’re receiving a lot of buzz, even getting the track, "Sleeping At Night," onto anti-top 40 station KCRW. Nolan and band mates Stephen Edelstein and Tessa Thompson, recently played a sold out show at The Satellite (formerly Spaceland) with rising act Gotye, and L.A. Weekly has labeled them "One of the 5 Local Bands that will be huge in 2012." With a first official EP coming out soon, this year is definitely looking up. We sat down with Nolan to learn more about the inspiration behind his soul.
Tell me about the name Caught A Ghost.
Caught A Ghost is an expression for when you’re possessed by the spirit, used in the past by blues singers when they’d hear a good performance. I thought it was interesting and exemplified what I was trying to do musically. There is this sense of recapturing all the music that inhabited me that I’ve listened to, but also bring something new to it.
How did you get started on this project?
I had just moved into a house on Mt. Washington [in Los Angeles] that had a recording studio built by Danger Mouse. “Dick in a Box” was recorded there. [When] I moved in there it was kind of a sense of being influenced by his music and inhabiting that space. I was coming toward the end of [previous project] Red Arrow Messenger and seeking transition, so I started by making tracks alone in my studio, or in collaboration with people. It was very much a kind of reinvention of sorts.
You mix blues with electronic and dub step sounds. Can you list some influences?
My dad has a Motown Stacks cover band and has always been a big influence for me musically. There are pictures of me sitting in his guitar case as a little kid. I grew up on bands like Portishead. I love people like James Blake. People have referred to him as dub step even though that seems kind of a funny analogy because he doesn’t have that wobble base sound, but he’s somebody who I think incorporates that stuff in his music. 12th Planet and Rusko and the guys who do traditional dub step sounds are really cool. [Then there are] folk artists like Woody Guthrie and Robert Johnson [doing] Delta blues and artists like the Beatles [who] cover a pretty expansive amount of ground. They do a lot of different things and that’s always been interesting to me, being eclectic as an artist. Everyone goes through phases.
Are you influenced by L.A. in your music?
I grew up in Los Angeles, and so it constitutes a big part of my memories, inform my disposition and my ideas. At present, much of my work is a love letter to Los Angeles. The people's faces, the history and architecture. I spend so much time sitting in a car pissed off at L.A., that my music is really a way of reminding myself how beautiful it is.
Can you tell me about the EP release? What songs will be on it?
"Sleeping At Night," "No Sugar In My Coffee," "Connected," and "Somehow." It’s our first official release. We’ve got the "No Sugar In My Coffee" video finished, and hopefully we’ll have another video to release with the EP. Look for it in late March or April.
