Rael was born in the summer of 79 in an industrial city in the north of England, many UK cities had become to some extent Ghost Towns with coal mines shutting down and industries being replaced with cheaper foreign imports. Luckily his mother had the good idea to move to Scotland to bring up her son in the middle of nowhere. Music was always present in the family home, and the families ancestors go back to street performing musicians and Gypsy circus performers. Being brought up on a steady diet of Talking Heads, Brian Eno and folk music, Rael then fell in love with Hip Hop in the nineties, and later Trip Hop, he somehow mixed all these things up and created his own personal style of music, which was later to become Ghostown. Rael performed in Scotland and England at small venues and small festivals as "Rael", and "Dr Raelskinnt" , performing with various musicians. He got a 4 track tape recorder at 18 and started producing and recording, he later got a Yamaha RM1X and a SU10 sampler creating more and more original music including early versions of Raingods and Monster. The earliest ever recording was made at Dottal's Galashiels studio with the tracks Raingods and ES40, the songs featured Bouzouki by Paul Rae and live Double bass by "Dave".
Upon moving to France in 2002, Rael searched for a new name as the Raelian sect people where quite known at the time, he settled on Ghostown as a reference to one of his favourite songs by The Specials. He played live at small venues around Montpellier before meeting DJ Kirsa and the Baptizer (guitarist)
Now a trio they played at alternative festivals and venues all around France, especially between 2008 and 2012. They played with artists such as .. Wax Tailor, Chinese Man, Balkan Beat Box among others. They toured Marseille, Lyon, Grenoble, Paris, Rennes, Lausanne, London, Lille, and Orleans.
Rael had moved from the RM1X to the Yamaha Motif, which was used for most of the production of 2008's studio recording of Reflectionz, a lot of previous material from the demo album "Culture Vulture" was re-recorded for this album. The CD was released across France through an independent distributor, and the song Accordeon became a Ghostown hit, being used in various TV spots and videos.
After the Yamaha Motif, Rael moved on to an Akai MPC, before settling on the brand Elektron, using the Octatrack, machineDrum and AnalogFour he produced the next album Spektah Gadgo, with more focus on Balkan Gypsy sounds. By this point Rael was living in the Vercors, with DJ Kirsa and Baptizer remaining down south, inevitably the trio became more of a solo act, though DJ Kirsa has continually contributed to this day.
After years of being loyal to the Elektron machines and working with no computer, Rael finally caved in and went big with an iMac, using Logic totally transformed the mixing and mastering process and enabled Rael to release music much more consistently. Shanksville was the first album in 2018 after a 6 year break from releasing, but Wuchak released in 2019 contained much of the Elektron era recordings from 2012-2018.
From 2018 Rael started producing mashup videos for his songs, sampling films and animations, he gradually got into photography and invested in audiovisual equipment. Though not keen to actually be in the videos there are a few "real" videos out there like Where's Will (2020)
Over the years Rael / Ghostown has collaborated with several artists, Degiheugi (multiple times), UHT°, Monsieur Grandin, MC Kriké, Smokey Joe, Hubwar, L'oeuf Raide, Wasaru.
Most Ghostown albums contain at least one instrumental song, Ghostown has also released instrumental versions and instrumental projects under the alias Ghostownbeats. He also worked on music for a dance theatre, one of those songs "Frozen" is used for a program on W9
Ghostown lives on, the album Multum was released in 2024 with the track Poor Martin going down well. The upbeat "Pulling Up the Roses" was released in 2025 along with the downbeat "Sophia". New music will be coming soon.
DJ Kirsa has built up a prolific catalogue of releases over the last few years and Rael has been doing vocals on a few of his tracks.
Baptizer got into Flamenco music and is still rocking on!
