‘Nós queremos o novo, mas cercaram um muro, pelas angũstias do povo, A onde foi meu futuro?’ (Lindas E Findas) / ‘We want something new, But they’ve built a wall around us, Because of the people’s anguish, Where has my future gone?’ (Beautiful And Finished)

This is an album about uncertainty.  The uncertainty of trying to build a life in a new country.  About insecurity.  The insecurity of finding somewhere to call home in a city that increasingly doesn’t recognise that fundamental right.  About disdain.  The disdain of a country that is built on the labour of those it views of as expendable.  About distance.  The distance from family and friends that seemingly grows longer by the day.  Yet, it is also an album about love.  The new loves, the new friendships that form and give meaning to this struggle, and steel you as you build a new life.

Fantasma (Ghost) were first formed by two friends who emigrated from Brazil to live in New York, and have now expanded to a five piece, with members of Dollhouse and Stigmatism swelling the ranks.  Their debut album, Quase (Almost), though remains very much rooted in the lived experiences that first inspired the band’s music.  Drawing with equal relish on both Latin American post-punk and 1980s’ UK anarcho traditions, it is bound by the conventions of neither.

Languidly swirling guitars, a fluidly supple rhythm section, and drawled semi-spoken Portuguese vocals from the groundwork as the album opens with the hazily brooding Me Dá Seu Trabalho (Give Me Your Work) and the insidiously catchy Onde Eu Estou? (Where Am I?).  These same guitars then spark into taut angularity on Eu Quero Você (I Want You) and Eu Nāo Sei (I Don’t Know), before sliding back into languorously melodic reflection on Lindas E Findas.  It is a blend that evokes both a sense of blurred disorientation and of futures dissolving, yet also conjures fleeting glimpses of quiet hope, of progress tentatively being made.