GHOST TOAST
János Stefán on the forward-thinking instrumentalists who are finally putting Hungary on the prog map.
“Here in Hungary prog’s not really that popular,” admits János Stefán, bassist and co-founder of Ghost Toast.“It’s mostly underground and, even then, it’s not ‘classic’ prog like Pink Floyd or Jethro Tull. Alternative rock and metal are currently the base of a lot of bands doing this kind of thing here.”
In a sea of melodic rockers and Tool wannabes, Ghost Toast stand out. The quartet formed in 2008 in the town of Debrecen, and across their four albums to date they’ve become experts in polyrhythmic instrumental prog. On this year’s Shade Without Color, they blast out incalculable time signatures, the intricacy and lunacy interrupted by post-rock segues, cellos and samples.
“When Ghost Toast started, we had the idea that we wouldn’t sound like anyone else,” says Stefán. “We didn’t want to think too much about how audiences would react, and from the beginning we wanted to use samples. Why should we only use the bass, drums and guitar? And when we met our cello player [János Pusker] immediately, we were like: ‘I don’t care if this song gets played on the radio or not!’”
Ghost Toast didn’t perform their first live show together until 2010. Given Hungary’s scant prog scene, they had to take every opportunity they could, and eventually they made it to Budapest. “It’s the only place cosmopolitan enough to handle bands like us,” reckons Stefán.
They soon started to attract more international listeners when they signed with Finnish prog and metal label, Inverse Records. The partnership has certainly helped the band accrue 10s of thousands of Spotify streams to date, and counting.
Stefán concedes that, due to just how out-there Ghost Toast are, it’s unlikely they’ll ever become a fulltime pursuit, but that doesn’t dampen his ambition of their brand of prog to the wider world.
“It would be really nice to go on tour in Europe,” he says. “We have never even played a foreign country before. That’s the next step, but we’re already satisfied to have an audience that is international.”
“Budapest is the only place here that’s cosmopolitan enough for us!”
See www.ghosttoast.hu for more information and to stream their music.