Lancashire-born. Acid-damaged. 909-obsessed. Abigail Ward (code name: Ghost Assembly) runs a one-woman op from the dark end of the dancefloor. Her game? Raw machine funk. Narcotic basslines. Beatdowns dipped in dub, NY garage, post-punk spite and the snare fills of Stock, Aitken & Waterman. It’s queer longing with a 4/4 thrust. Reverb as resistance.
Her first twelve, I Miss Your Love (Rüf Kutz), hit like heartbreak. Test Pressing called it “a modern classic.” Joe Muggs dubbed it “churchy, but sexual.” Copies fetched triple digits on Discogs. Optimo, Colleen ‘Cosmo’ Murphy, Luke Una, Bradley Zero… everyone with ears was down bad for it.
Her next three releases traversed the drug-fuelled outskirts of acid house, breakbeat and cosmic disco, and featured contributions from Brian-Not-Brian & Piers Harrison, DJ Absolutely Shit and harmonica-toting folk outlaw Oliver Cross. No one knows what the fuck is coming next.
Before the booth and the boards, A.W. did time in Manchester’s record joints: Piccadilly, Vinyl Exchange, Kingbee. A decade in the vinyl trenches, digging deep and selling wax to freaks and lifers. She got her education on the shop floor, face-down in the dollar bins, crawling for the weird, the wonky, the slept-on.
Away from music, she’s a writer, a radio host, an exhibition curator with a nose for what history tried to bury. Her practice is part heist, part haunt: an audacious blend of autofiction, collage and archive.
Are you coming along for the ride?