Tonight, Miami hip-hop duo Ghost Arm comes out of the shadows for only its second
official performance as part of Flaunt Thursday at Respectable Street.
With rhyming schemes this varied, absurdist, and somnambulant, it's hard
not to get a full-on Definitive Jux flashback churning. FIU students
and roommates Robert "Rolodex" Hodgkins and David "SPF" Golding not only
have created dark, murky beats of their own in the apartment they
share, but producer/Dead Meat drummer Roberto Pagano has supplied some
soul-soaked tracks recalling channeling J. Dilla and Madlib. In both
cases, the results are on another level. The plan is to press an initial
release this winter.
One more salient detail about Ghost Arm's first show: they opened for
Surfer Blood in Orlando last month. Hodgkins and the West Palm Beach
band's drummer TJ Schwarz used to play together in the area hardcore act
Hearts Over Rome. Support for Thursday is a rumored electro set by Cop
City/Chill Pillars, the Lake Worth avant garage rock act that overlaps
with the Love Handles both in terms of personnel and jarring, muscular
songcraft.
Just to give you an idea of what we're talking about, listen to evolving jazz-centric beats and witty, spitfire rhymes ("Nothing ever gets better/ strive to be alive/ pockets full of nickels and dimes/ talk about hard times/ that's what she said") of "Speak Easy Saloon" via Ghost Arm's Facebook page.
Two more tracks over at the duo's MySpace.
