Chasing Ghosts drop new single "Dig"
Cover art by Charlotte Allingham @coffinbirth
Deadly quotes from media 2021
Wall of Sound “When it comes to addressing indigenous affairs in the music scene, no one does it quite like Chasing Ghosts frontman Jimmy Kyle.”
Rolling Stone -“’Summer’ on track to be one of the most powerful entries in their discography to date.”
The Guardian “Australia’s best new music for February...weaving English with his native tongue, and delivering a powerful punk song with sugary hooks and a thrilling momentum that belie the horrors of such a massacre".
The Partae “’Summer’ is one hell of an amped track with a beat that drives so strong it has the legs to keep rockin’ all Summer long.
Scenezine “Every track on the forthcoming EP is about real people and real situations, all of them born from intense real-life stories”.
Hysteria Mag “Jimmy Kyle honestly admitted that he “was scared to write these songs.”
Watch the video for Summer below
DIG is the third track from Chasing Ghost’s forthcoming EP Homelands, released this Friday, and it is just as potent as the previous two singles 'Summer' and 'Busted Lung'.
LISTEN TO DIG
The first track released from the band’s HOMELANDS EP was SUMMER, a punk-rock driven track that takes the listener on a journey through the grieving eyes of an Aboriginal Elder, retelling the true story of the Towel Creek Massacre NSW, in which a sole child survived.
BUSTED LUNG, the second single, is inspired by a true story of a young gay man [a friend of Jimmy Kyle’s] assaulted in a hate crime, which took place in inner city Melbourne. The survivor forgave his attackers, and advocated they not serve prison time.
Chasing Ghosts new single DIG explores Australia’s history and treatment of Aboriginal people from the English invasion through to the modern period in chronological order. It asks the listener to dig a little deeper into our confronting history including the frontier wars, Aboriginal resistance, the mission area of assimilation, the stolen generations and indentured servitude, the mining industry and native title and finally deaths in custody.
“I was scared to write these songs, because a lot of the topics are challenging,” says Jimmy Kyle, a proud Goori man, of the Thungutti mob from the mid-north coast of NSW.
“But that’s how I knew I was onto something. It made me feel nervous.”
“I know people are going to come after me with some of these songs,” he says. “But I know in my heart that telling these stories is right and telling them in the way I do is the right thing to do. I know my audience is predominantly non-Indigenous, so I have to engage them in a way that engages their heart. Because that way they’re not going to be judged, but they can put themselves in an empathetic position to go on the journey.
To find the answer he lent on his bandmates: Josh Burgan (guitar/vocals), Aaron Schultz (guitar/vocals), Jake Dargaville (drums), Chris O’Neill (keys/vocals) and Rohan Welsh (bass). Together they breathed weight and volume into Kyle’s compositions, staying true to the core organic elements that define Chasing Ghosts – no autotune, only real instruments – while willingly following their chief songwriter into new musical territory.
With a strong passion for Aboriginal languages Jimmy Kyle is committed to his culture and his community and has a long history working with First Nations Youth, Elders and community. Further, Jimmy’s cultural awareness training workshops and seminars are in high demand due to the cultural depth his brings to this space. He works with entities such as the Victoria Police, DHHS and other government agencies to help them better understand First Nations cultures and histories. “Only having a little knowledge is dangerous,” he says.
Stream Homelands
CHASING GHOSTS : are Jimmy Kyle (founder/frontman and chief song-writer ), Josh Burgan (guitar/vocals), Aaron Schultz (guitar/vocals), Jake Dargaville (drums), Chris O’Neill (keys/vocals) and Rohan Welsh (bass).
