“Some artists make music really rapidly—they put out mixtapes on SoundCloud, like, every few months,” Alex Frankel ruminates. Of course, Frankel and his Holy Ghost! bandmate Nick Millhiser do not fall into this category. “We’re so envious of that.”
The duo may be methodical in their output—shimmering bursts of disco, synth-pop, and lingering grooves—but that doesn’t mean Holy Ghost! is not prodigious. Over nearly a decade, they have gone from being DFA’s rising sons to triple threats. They are indefatigable DJs WHAT HERE. They’re producers frequently recruited to remix new life into tracks like Cut Copy’s “Hearts on Fire,” LCD Soundsystem’s “Drunk Girls,” and even Katy Perry’s “Birthday.”
And they’re inventive musicians who’ve released countless original singles (such as 2010’s critically lauded “Hold On”) and albums (beginning with 2010’s Static on the Wire EP). They are once again adding to their thinking-man’s dance repertoire with the vibrant Crime Cutz EP (released April 29, 2016 on DFA Records). The objective, Nick says, was singular: “Aesthetically, Alex and I were musically, melodically trying to do something that felt like fun.”
Holy Ghost!’s release last year, Work for Hire (DFA Records)—their second mix album, after 2009’s The Remixes Vol. 1 (DFA Records)—was a mesmerizing time capsule of remixes that boldly traced the group’s aesthetic from their nascent days dabbling in groove to radical rethinkings of songs. It was, in certain ways, a necessary stepping stone to Crime Cutz. “Work for Hire was a good breather from working on original music,” Alex says. “It was a good way to get back into the studio. There’s a lot of pressure when you’re writing original stuff. We were able to focus more on groove and arrangement, rather than trying to write formative pop songs.”
