Bring Your Own Hammer – Ghosts
With Ghosts, Bring Your Own Hammer provides both a present and an invitation, released in July 2025 in honor of the vinyl release of their debut album My Grief on the Sea, the EP is a free digital download on Bandcamp, featuring revamped versions of previously released pieces as well as an intriguing new composition. It’s both a thank-you to longtime fans and a welcome to new ones, highlighting the project’s propensity to mix shoegaze sounds, gothic atmospheres, and avant-garde experimentation.
- “Over the Ghosts” (Single Mix) – Mike Smalle’s collaboration with Wally Nkikita is enhanced by Marcus Holdaway’s High Llamas string arrangement. Shoegaze-inspired guitars vibrate under layers of folk melodies, resulting in a soundscape that is dark, nostalgic, and poetic. It’s a piece that carries an air of memories, like voices lost in fog.
- “Embarkation (2025 Mix)” – Tony Higgins and Agu provide an experimental reworking that starts in an avant-garde haze. The synths create discomfort, with their chaotic interaction providing something both frightening and strangely beautiful. It’s a composition that challenges immediate concentration, instead leaving room for abstraction and disorientation.
- “Old Oak Road (2025 Mix)” – This remix of the 2022 single pairs Mike Smalle with Cathal Coughlan and features Jah Wobble’s distinctive bass sound. The track develops like a gothic ballad, with a dark duet filled with mystery and melancholy. The mysterious refrain “never reach home” repeats against changing, obscure soundscapes, recalling Nick Cave’s strange atmospheres at their most dreamlike.
- “The Mansions of the Dead” – The EP’s only new tune is also one of its best. Smalle’s collaboration with Eileen Gogan opens with cinematic, psychedelic melodies soon to evolve into a reverbed duet that is poetic and deeply moving. Nostalgia and melancholy come together, revealing a lovely sadness.
Ghosts is more than a companion piece; it feels like an exploration of memory, loss, and change, deeply rooted in the gothic heritage while breaking out into the avant-garde and cinematic.
