New Music: CLOUD STUDIES – Ghosts

Feelings of loss reverberate through every chord and word of Ghosts, the debut single from London-based CLOUD STUDIES. It’s a sensation that also pervades the accompanying visualiser.

Dream pop with a motorik beat and a strong sense of sadness, Ghosts is highly atmospheric and emotionally laden. Equal to Still Corners and Slowdive at their most expressive and melodic best, its rich tones will ease their way through your defences, as a sense of lightness wraps its tendrils around that indefinable tristesse in your soul.

Talking about the inspiration for the song, the band confides, “Despite being influenced initially by the Usbourne book, World of the Unknown: Ghosts, a vintage cult classic filled with screaming skulls, phantom ships and demon dogs, the lyrics tell a more human story. After the loss of a loved one, the protagonist is haunted by their memory, and each night in his dreams he is visited by their apparition, which dances and serenades him.”

Says band member Martin J. Langthorne about the accompanying video, “It was inspired in part by Unofficial Britain (2020), Gareth E. Lees’ book musing on the modern magic, myths, and folklore of place in unloved and unlikely urban locations. Ghosts creates a monochrome dreamscape of the thin places where the supernatural seems close to everyday life.

“Travelling through spaces overwritten by countless lives over past centuries, on what feels like a short ‘found-footage’ folk horror tale, we visit both sacred and desecrated places, each with their monuments to the memory of previous inhabitants who still reach out to us. The band members remain isolated, each in their own discrete dimension but connected by the music.”

CLOUD STUDIES are Adam Cresswell on vocals and bass; Nat Guest on drums; and Martin J. Langthorne on guitars. The support Mahogany at The Victoria Dalston in the 1st of February, 2025. For details on that and other streaming options for Ghosts, head over to Instagram.