Ghost Funk Orchestra (GFO), led by composer, arranger, producer, and multi-instrumentalist Seth Applebaum delivers their fifth album, A Trip to the Moon which has us reliving those days in 1969 when Apollo 11 with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the moon. For many of us in this writer’s generation, that dramatic scene played out on television worldwide, remains indelible. Even the many Super Bowl telecasts haven’t delivered as large a TV audience. What Applebaum does here is quite remarkable, incorporating several sound bites from the actual audio transmissions between the Apollo 11 crew and Mission Control in Houston, TX.
Applebaum also studied film, photos, and music from the era and weaves them into this mix, using a blend of digital recording techniques to insert the ‘60s and ‘70s analog keyboards and surf guitar, which was prevalent at the time. Applebaum plays over a dozen instruments from guitars to all manner of keyboards and noisemaking objects. Romi Hanoch and Megan Mancini switch off on lead vocals behind a horn section of saxophonist Stephen Chen, trumpeter Billy Aukstik, flutist Mike Sarason, and trombonist James Kelly. Will Marshall adds strings to a few tracks and guest Stuart Bogie colors five tracks with his array of woodwinds.
Following the brief space-like overture with its sci-fi synth waves, vocalist Mancini with harmonies from Hanoch delivers a punchy, somewhat funky “Eyes of Love,” about a landlocked love held captive by a cosmonaut ready to launch off in worlds unknown. The first of those many sound bit clips introduces a snappy R&B “Where To?” with Hanoch in the lead. As the sound bites relay “out over the Canary Islands” the first largely orchestral pivotal track “To the Moon!” unfolds with waves of brass and Bogie’s array of bass clarinet, b-flat clarinet, and flute adding to the ethereal vibe along with the GFO horns.
From this point, we ascend into decidedly spacey realms with Bogie and Marshall collaborating on a densely dissonant “Achlo” segueing to a groove-filled R&B “Nova” with Mancini on vocals, punctuated by Applebaum’s guitars and “one man” rhythm section. Sound bites appear again in the buoyant “Helios,” marked by blaring horns and percolating percussion with Hanoch singing “I curse the sun/When the moon, it hides/There’s nothin but nothin”. Standout track “Again” features Hanoch vowing to never fall in love again, a performance just dripping with intensity and passion, spurred on by Bogie’s tenor solo.
The lyrics usually intersperse love or broken love themes with the Apollo sound bites and solar, synth-oriented sonics as heard in “A Solar Wind” and the riveting, rocking “Space Walk.” Hanock does hail the star “Casadastra” in a track graced by audio clips and her “Up, up, up, to the moon that attracts” vocal followed by the clip that says, “We never saw the moon.” This invariably leads to “A Rare View” with Bogie’s clarinet and Sarason’s flute floating wave-like over the synth backdrop. That bit of suspense, emulative of the astronauts’ awe is followed by the audio “We took on faith that the moon would be there, which says quite a bit for ground control,” leading to “Totality” where Mancini ponders that there is someone in the sky for her etched into the twilight over GFO’s trademark horn slathered funk with Sarason’s Rahsaan-like flute bringing it home. The light jazz fusion of “Infinite Dark” closes a showcase for Applebaum’s piano, keyboards, and synths, a fitting end to this memorable journey, rife with drama, dizzying sonics, and inventive musicianship.
