Compare this EP to bands like GYBE!, Explosions In The Sky, Mono or Mogwai and you won't be far off the mark, the duo drop a couple of other lesser known names for good measure : Sweden's Pg.Lost and Leicester's Maybeshewill.
However, two things set Gespenst (the German word for 'ghost') apart.
The first is that they are not strictly speaking a band, but two brothers - Syahmi and Zuhair Rawi.
The second is that they are from Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia, not a city especially noted for instrumental rock.
As you would expect, sweeping crescendo driven cinematic elements are to the fore.
These are constructed through heavy guitar chords, drums, piano and synthesized orchestration. The sound is epic enough to make you think that this is more than just the work of two men.
Fortunately, there's also enough originality and variety to reassure the listener that the brothers are not simply going through the motions and following a prescribed formula.
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The piano gives a classical character to tracks like Memoir and another nice touch comes in the first half of September where a woman reads the last two stanzas to the Sylvia Plath poem Mad Girl's Love Song ending with the lines "I shut my eyes and the world drops dead, I think I made you up inside my head".
At thirty seven minutes, the playing time for the seven tracks is relatively brief but the impression you get is there's lots more good stuff where this came from.
Gespenst's artist page on Fluttery Records' website
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