Ghost Bitch reluctantly follows the tradition of rock & roll self aggrandizement. Is a master of faux-naive shrieks of the feminine grotesque rendered with bloody guitar and rejection of skill. A romantic in dystopia pushing the sentimental to the point of abjection. Likes to play with cliches and loop pedals. "a grunge vhs falling apart in a dream."
Recorded live from hell by chiron & the black dog on the threshold of 2020.
Olympia music, always freaking out the squares. Nobody's complaining. Ghost Bitch is what we mean, a music like no other. It's Stasia Aaa, playing guitar like no one else. Stasia moved to Olympia almost ten years ago from Brooklyn, where she attended Pratt Institute. After school she was ready for the real world. That's why she moved here.
Stasia received a guitar for her birthday (age 10 yrs) and had a few lessons: "they were very discouraging. I Had small fingers and the instructor didn't seem interested in teaching me. My brother would teach me Nirvana songs but he would say 'You're doing it wrong. You're already learning all the wrong things'." Little did he know that's exactly what Stasia needed. "When I started to play music again I found No Wave, and that totally liberated me from the concept of doing the 'wrong thing'. I didn't make any cassettes or record any music before moving to Olympia (I was into other things). I don't care about chords, though I definitely use them now, which I had to learn to accept. I felt guilty about them for a little while but powerful music doesn't have to do with technical ability or a lack thereof, or any of those old structures." Even so, one is struck by Stasia's technical ability on the guitar. "I like playing guitar. I started playing noise music, I feel I always need to be experimental but I love rock music."
Ghost Bitch is Stasia making her own style musical space. The debut cassette Ghost Bitch is stark, clear cassette tape, clear cassette box with hand etched Ghost Bitch logo. Stasia carved each one by hand with an X-Acto knife. "My roommate said, 'you're wasting your time'". Dedication. It comes through in the uncompromising soundz.
Stasia came to the forefront of Olympia's music scene a couple years ago via her collaborative duo with Sarah Moore, Women of the Divine Orgasm; Stasia on guitar, Sarah on a keyboard and programmable drum machine, both sharing vocal chores. It's not too loud but plenty destructo. The duo ended after two cassette-only releases. "Sad. But it got me back into doing Ghost Bitch and a pop format, which I didn't do before."
Much of the time in Olympia Ghost Bitch has worked with Captain Tripps Balsington at High Command (who also provided the above photog of Women of the Divine Orgasm). The current plan is to finish a Ghost Bitch album with Olympia producer Bryce Aguirre then move to Melbourne, Australia. "I will definitely miss Olympia, there's a lot of people here I care about and I've had a lot of important life events. But I don't want to get too comfortable. I didn't realize how easy it would be to spend ten years here and have it pass by so quickly." Then ten years in Melbourne? "Hopefully. I'd love that."
Cassette-only releases by Ghost Bitch and Women of the Divine Orgasm HERE.
