Very sad news

Jussi "Giuse" Turunen, the singer, guitarist and songwriter of Ghost Trio (and Afar a Bird and some other projects), passed away on 8th of July, 2007.

The last song that Jussi recorded, "Molto Pericoloso", is available here .

Rest in peace, Giuse!

- Sampo

My peace is there in the receding mist
when I may cease from treading these long shifting thresholds
and live the space of a door
that opens and shuts
(Samuel Beckett)

I believe it was (it must have been) in the Fall of 2004, when Giuse and Sampo made the acquaintance of Janne, the drummer of Ghost Trio. The group was given its name by Giuse, who broke away from the warmth and security of the newlyfounded collective in search of a suitable combination of letters that their joint venture might go by. Nothing perpetrated by his own feeble imagination struck him as anything approaching appropriate and it was getting late and he was hungry and cold... So he proceeded to do what he always does when what he does doesn't do it. Hmm... This is the part that gives me the most trouble. What is it, really, that he manages then? Gives in? Gives way to... uninvention? Well, however anything ever gets done (it amazes me!) in this instance it was by way of stealing the title of a certain musical composition (following the lead of a certain Irish playwright) that the good old piece of nomenclature was resuscitated and brought to connote the three of them! That's it. The end of (the beginning of the) story!
Ghost Trio played their first show consisting of arrangements of a handful of Giuse's solo numbers as an acoustic act at Samettiklubi, Helsinki (you shouldn't have missed that one, but you did!). In late January 2005 the Trio whiled away a few days at Harju Studios and produced their first record featuring the first three songs they had put together jointly. From these sessions two songs survive, 'Nocturne', a serene piece of Satiean subtlety and charm, and 'Dare go on', a miniature epic in the once popular Virgilian vein.

By the late summer of the same year Ghost Trio had worked through another five songs to the point of their begging to be executed (lest they get away) and subsequently exposed to the public ear (to ensure they do, the right way)! The "Key EP" turned out as autumnal in its mood as anything since Beethoven's prototype of 1808 and it soon became apparent that everything in the natural realm would work against any premature release of such a pestilence-stricken assortment of end-of-the-yearly sonorities. Patiently they waited and waited, for the weather to catch up, for the bitter cold and the endless dark, for the last long weeks of yet another year. Eventually, in November 2005, the record was made available. Here featured is the opening track, 'Circuit of Possession', a song that had been in gestation since late 1999 when the first version of the song surfaced as Giuse's solo number (in the 2005 recording the original 8-track home recording can be heard for the first few bars before the band takes over!).

More recently, after losing track of their drummer for a period of time (this is when Giuse and Sampo sought shelter under the moniker Afar a Bird ), Ghost Trio went through another round of creation, rehearsals and recording. From the four songs that were recorded in December 2006, here are featured three: 'Air Out', a song written in memory of Hunter S. Thompson, 'Voces intimae', a Sibelian side dish, and 'Piecemeal', a piano ballad marked by Sampo's bold cadenzas on the electric piano.

Afar a Bird - 3 Song Cycle now available on