Ghosts In The Park Bruce Soord

• 1 Concepcion 01:25
• 2 Pillars 03:10
• 3 Meet Me On The Downs 03:05
• 4 Kept Me Thinking 06:34
• 5 Day Of Wrath 04:21
• 6 Our Predicament 03:43
• 7 Stared Down 04:33
• 8 You Made A Promise 02:56
• 9 Ghosts In The Park 12:52
• Total Runtime 42:39

Info for Ghosts In The Park

The Pineapple Thief frontman Bruce Soord returns with a powerful new solo album.

As a founding member and principal songwriter of The Pineapple Thief, Bruce Soord has developed a distinctive musical style over the last ten years that combines emotional directness with musical restraint. Ghosts In The Park, his latest solo album, is his most personal and candid work to date: marked by loss, memory and the quiet moments that emerge whilst life goes on, whilst everything else seems to stand still.

"I wrote this in a hotel room in Hamburg whilst on tour with The Pineapple Thief. The words came later. I remember writing about the loss of my father whilst clearing out his old retirement home flat. ‘The silence in the car’, as I sat there looking at the place I only knew with him. I opened the door and saw all his clothes and photos … ‘A whole life, scattered amongst the clothes.’ I went back to my studio, determined to turn the loss into something positive. So I closed my eyes and wrote down the earliest memories that came to mind, not the difficult, painful ones from his final years. Those words formed the second half of the song. So, essentially, it’s simply a song about life and precious memories." – Bruce Soord

Created over a period of two years during extensive tours with The Pineapple Thief, the album took shape in hotel rooms, unfamiliar cities and moments of enforced solitude. At the same time, Soord experienced the slow farewell and eventual death of his father, as well as the progression of his mother’s Alzheimer’s disease. These experiences form the emotional backbone of Ghosts In The Park: grief in motion, memories surfacing unexpectedly, and the quiet resolve to carry on.

At the heart of the album lies the acoustic guitar, often captured in raw first takes directly in hotel rooms and subsequently carefully combined with studio recordings. This tension between fragility and control defines the sound of the album. Tracks such as “Concepción”, “Meet Me On The Downs” and the title track were created in specific locations – Chile, Hamburg, Oberhausen – each of which left its own subtle mark on the music. Parks, harbours and anonymous spaces become recurring settings where past and present collide, interspersed with fleeting moments of clarity.

Recorded almost entirely by Soord himself, with bass contributions from Jon Sykes on “Kept Me Thinking”, the album was produced from a combination of hotel room recordings and studio sessions, thereby preserving the immediate atmosphere of its creation. Mastered by Steve Kitch, Ghosts In The Park presents itself as a pared-back, reflective yet consistently evolved work alongside Soord’s previous solo albums.

Bruce Soord

Bruce Soord
is perhaps best known for writing, producing and mixing The Pineapple Thief albums. He also recorded, produced and mixed the 2013 release, Wisdom of Crowds.

Recently he has worked on the new Katatonia live release ‘Sanctitude’, providing a stereo and a high resolution 5.1 surround mix. Since then Bruce has been working on more 4 more major 5.1 releases as well as producing and mixing new projects scheduled for release later this year and early 2016. Watch this space for more news.

This album contains no booklet.