Grandpa’s Ghost & Filmmaker James Fotopoulos have been collaborating for several years.
They met through Joe Carducci, who first released Fotopoulos’ work (Provisional) & also released Grandpa’s Ghost’s last 3 Cds (Upland/Owned & Operated). Grandpa’s Ghost & Fotopoulos have 6 recorded sound/image projects, organized into 2 trilogies: “This Is Heaven To Me” & “The Void” (all unreleased). They’ve done live shows for the last year. At one show, Fotopoulos’ “The Catacombs,” “The Exiled Bird,” “Leviathan,” “The Fountain,” & “Weeping Tree” were simultaneously shown on 5 screens while 15 monitors featured 10 other of his pieces. Grandpas’s Ghost moved about the building, improvising soundtracks. At another show in the old office space of the Knitting Factory (NY), w/ artist Mike Marwit, they performed to Fotopoulos’ work projected onto a moving/bulbous screen made out of helium-filled surgical gloves. Please join CUFF on August 20th at Hungry Brain for a collaborative performance of Jim Fotopoulos & Grandpa’s Ghost [Ben Hanna, Eric Hall & Chris De] .
reviews of Grandpa’s Ghost:”a primal spirit that’s missing from nearly all of the soulless dreck poising as rock today. For the rock-starved, it’s a record full of woolly mysteries to lose oneself in.” —> Mike Wolf, TIME OUT NEW YORK “a splendid (& mildly creepy) soundtrack to an acid trip in a rural Illinois cornfield & continues the band’s journey away from its earlier, more conventional roots of alt-country into an uncharted kaleidoscope of American-inflected psychedelia.” —> J. Wright, SKYSCRAPER”Hawkwinded Crazy Horse-isms- Blessed are the freaks, the loners, the outcasts, the off-centered, the isolated, & the not-right, for they will show the rest of us what is possible. The Ghost first hit in ’95 w/ the full-house of no-depression bona fides; the melancholic lyrics, the inchoate yearnings of high lonesome Americana channeled through a countrified rock instrumental palette. GG now bury country-rock’s standard notions chin-deep in prairie-psych organ drones, fuzz bass, and endless repetition. Those who split didn’t notice one of America’s best bands standing in front of them.” —> Jon Fine “if crazy horse was a kraut-rock band” —> Chuck Eddy, VILLAGE VOICE

James Fotopoulos is an acclaimed filmmaker (& CUFF alumni). He’s compared a lot to Lynch, Cronenberg, Sokurov…but noted as a law unto himself.

(view his staggering body of work)

Fotopoulos’ “The Nest” is showing at CUFF on Sunday, August 22nd..