[News] Exclusive interview with Charlie Bramald of Ghost Of The Machine

Dear readers, we are pleased to offer you in this article an interview with the frontman of one of the most interesting UK prog bands of recent years. Please welcome Charlie Bramald of Ghost Of The Machine.

Hi Charlie, nice to have you on our pages, how are you?

Really great, thanks, and excited about the year ahead. Thanks for having me. Iā€™d like to wish you and all of your readers a very happy new year!

You are a singer of Prog music, how did your passion for music and these sounds in particular come about?

I fell in love with Genesis as a very small child in the early 1990s. My older brother played his old Genesis tapes to me and I thought it sounded like magic. I never stopped loving it, so clearly that set me on the path that Iā€™m on now, over 30 years ago. I joined my first band in 2013, a prog covers act called Catalyst, simply by a chance meeting at a special place called ā€œThe Sorry Headā€. I loved the songs and wanted to try singing them ā€“ and I did try. Badly. But I got better. Another band called Harmony Of Spheres followed in 2015 when I moved back to the north of England. I sang with them until 2019. I also played flute for a project called Nova Cascade between 2017 and 2023, but it wasnā€™t until Ghost Of The Machine that I became the lead vocalist of a band that produces original music.

The band Ghost Of The Machine was formed in 2021, how did the project and the choice of name come about?

My bandmates were in This Winter Machine until the end of 2020. When they departed, they used the name ā€œghosts of the machineā€ for the Facebook group chat they set up to plan their next moveā€¦ and the name just worked. Itā€™s a nod to the shared legacy of this group of people. So it stuck, apart from losing the ā€œsā€! Iā€™d had a close association with their former band (by which I mean I was known to them as an obsessive fan), and I was honoured to be invited to be their singer in the new band. It was a terrifying and exciting opportunity!

We got to writing and rehearsing immediately in early 2021, since the covid rules allowed bands to meet and rehearse at that time. I have to say the guys made me feel like I belonged straight away. They helped me so much with my development as a singer, a performer, and a writer of my own vocal parts (something Iā€™d never really done before).

You are all musicians from different musical backgrounds and experiences, what did you bring in terms of influences?

As a whole, we draw from 70s and 80s prog like Rush and Marillion, and a little more Genesis over time, with a smattering of other influences like the new wave sounds of Gary Numan and Ultravox, and the AOR sensibilities of Journey and Toto. Itā€™s an interesting melting pot, and we donā€™t ā€œtryā€ to be prog as such. We just write hooky rock songs that happen to be on the long side! Myself, I adore Peter Gabrielā€™s unrivaled theatricality and Phil Collinsā€™ powerful performances. I also have a background in amateur and semi- professional stage acting, so I think I bring a bit of that to the band. Moreso than being a technical singer, I want to bring stories to life on the stage with my voice and my body.

The second album ā€˜Empires Must Fallā€™ is due out in March 2025, how would you describe this work?

It feels like a logical evolution for us. It still has the hooks and melodies from the debut, and it retains that big sound thanks to Bob Cooperā€™s enormous production, but weā€™ve gone denser with the arrangements and darker with the sounds. It feels more polished to my mind. If you liked what we did on ā€˜Scissorgamesā€™, youā€™ll feel right at home with ā€˜Empires Must Fallā€™, but we hope youā€™ll hear the strides forward weā€™ve made together in the last 3 years of playing together.

6 tracks weaving intense instrumental and vocals, what themes do the lyrics deal with?

Itā€™s a direct sequel to our debut record ā€˜Scissorgamesā€™! I realised early on in the writing process that we werenā€™t done with that story. There had to be consequences for the act of violence which ended the first record. The newly crowned Empress Of The Light (seen on the cover art by Claudia Caranfa) is the same woman who defeated ā€“ killed ā€“ the malevolent Puppet King in the song ā€˜Scissors (Reprise)ā€™ from ā€˜Scissorgamesā€™. The Empress yearns to make her world a better place, so that nobody else would suffer like she did at the hands of the Puppet King. But in doing so, I fear she loses the true meaning of justice. Does she become a tyrant herself? As well as the question of what justice really is, we grapple with themes of guilt and shame, the fear of standing up to powerā€¦ and we want to find out whether reconciliation is possible after so much pain across the two albums. I hope so.

Fine Progressive Rock sounds, how does the creative process of your music take place?

Thank you! We spent a long time in the writing room for this record. We started writing before weā€™d finished recording ā€˜Scissorgamesā€™, in fact, because we had a long gap between recording sessions with Bob Cooper due to scheduling conflicts! Because weā€™ve had a long time to hone the songs, weā€™ve taken care to make sure the arrangements are more fluid, and that every band member has lots of moments to shine. We usually write together, in a rehearsal room in Leeds, England, once a week, so we have a strong understanding of each band memberā€™s role in the process. We only decide to go into the studio when the songs are ready. In this case, we had 5 songs in February 2024 and something was missing. Then Scotty sent me a demo of ā€˜The Oneā€™ one afternoon, and suddenly we had found the missing piece. We were in the recording studio shortly after.

You have extracted a single to anticipate the release of the album, do you have more planned between now and March 2025?

Yes, we just mentioned ā€˜The Oneā€™. I think that was the correct song to lead with. However! A 12 minute proggy powerhouse called Panopticon will release on 1 February on streaming services. This song is from a pivotal point in the story, but itā€™s also one of the songs Iā€™m most excited for people to hear. Itā€™s ā€œred meatā€ for prog fans, packed with propulsive drums and an insistent organ riff that kind of evokes ā€˜The Knifeā€™ by Genesis. In fact, weā€™ve already performed it at a few shows in 2024, so Iā€™m really pleased that fans will get to hear the studio version soon. Weā€™ll have one song a month out on streaming services, but if you want to hear the whole album from 7 March, youā€™ll be able to pick up a CD or digital download of the whole album from our website www.gotm.band. For US and EU customers who want a CD, we
recommend https://ghostofthemachine.bandcamp.com or from our awesome label https://essentials.progrock.com instead, to avoid import fees!

This is your second studio effort, how does it differ from your previous one?

Our debut record was very well received, so we knew that we needed to show evolution in our sound. It adds a certain pressure, I wonā€™t pretend it doesnā€™t. We know anything we do will of course be compared to ā€˜Scissorgamesā€™ and the main song from that album. This meant that we decided not to rush the process, and we would make the record that we want to make. Trust the process! Our keys player Mark (Hagan), who does a lot of the initial songwriting, made a conscious decision to use more organ sounds as well as different synths so that this album would have a different character. We also tried to make the links between different sections of the long songs feel more seamless ā€“ Andy (Milner) is especially editorial in our writing process, and helped us to fine-tune those sections that needed it and to iron out the grooves and rhythmic patterns. As I touched on, I believe we successfully give each band member more individual moments to shine,
whether itā€™s Scottyā€™s scintilating solo in the middle of Panopticon, Grahamā€™s own epic moment on Fall Through Time or Stuartā€™s spine-tingling bassline that introduces that same song, or Markā€™s searing siren of ā€˜The Oneā€™ā€¦ thereā€™s an awful lot to discover on this record.

Many of our readers and your fans are wondering if there will be a chance to hear your music live, do you have plans in this regard for the near future?

We have a lot of shows in the UK planned ā€“ weā€™ll be playing in Sheffield to launch the album on 2nd March, and then our travels take us to Leicester, London, Glasgow, Southampton, Abingdon, Nuneatonā€¦ and we have more in the pipeline too. Check out our website www.gotm.band to join the mailing list and review our live dates. Itā€™s challenging for newer UK bands to get to Europe or the US at the moment, but never say never.

UK is one of the pivotal countries for Progressive Rock, how do you see the modern music scene in your country?

Itā€™s not as big a scene as it was in the 70s golden age and the 80s ā€œneoā€ prog movement in terms of exposure to UK audiences, for sure. That said, there are a ton of new bands carrying the torch here in the UK. Itā€™s a small community, but itā€™s thriving musically. There are tons of amazing albums being released all the time, and lots of amazing, tireless
promoters who are putting on incredible events.

What advice would you give to young artists approaching music with more sophisticated sounds like yours?

Itā€™s difficult to give advice because Iā€™m still learning myself! I was 32 when I released my first record as a vocalist, with Ghost Of The Machine, and that was less than 3 years ago. So the first thing Iā€™d say isā€¦ if you dreamed of being in a band, just give it a try! You never know where it will take you. And it really helps if you make the kind of music you yourself love. If the music comes from a place of honesty, you will be able to better able to communicate it to an audience. Thereā€™s no need to try and make songs be complicated for the sake of it, either. Thatā€™s not what prog is about, not what it was ever about. Be inspired, be creative, and see where it takes you. And if youā€™re lucky like me, find yourself a bunch of very talented musicians to work with!

How difficult is it to establish yourself in the modern music scene by proposing a genre as yours?

As we touched upon already, the audience for prog in the 2020s is not a large one. Genres are a helpful signpost as much as they are a millstone. I do think ā€œgeneralā€ rock audiences would love a lot of whatā€™s out there under the ā€œprogā€ category. The way people listen to and experience music has changed a lot, and not always for the better. While records are perhaps easier to make and release, marketing budgets have ballooned, and so has the amount of releases competing for audiene attention. Some of my peers, for example, donā€™t wish to release music on streaming services. This is absolutely understandable, because it is such a rotten deal for artists. Itā€™s not going away, though, because these platforms are great value for the fansā€¦ Music is not how I pay my rent, so I can afford to make the calculation that platforms like Spotify will help Ghost Of The Machine be heard by more people. If anyone wants to make a living doing prog in 2025, it is going to be a lot of work.

Do you have any other activities or artistic passions outside of music?

Iā€™m a huge rugby league fan. I grew up watching Wakefield Trinity, and I also support an
Australian team called Cronulla Sharks. I love to play video games in my spare time
(which is not very much, because I take on too many music projects!) and Sonic the
Hedgehog is still my hero.

I thank Charlie for the interview and wish him all the best for the release of the album and the continuation of his artistic career.

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Author: Jacopo Vigezzi

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