Besides keyboards, the twenty minute section comprising “Hungry for You (J'aurais toujours faim de toi)" through "One World (Not Three)" includes many saxophone harmonies, while the opening to "Secret Journey" showcases the Roland GR-300 Guitar Synthesizer.
However, the group could not better it with the equipment available at AIR Studios; they ended up using the demo as the backing track for the official recording, with drummer Stewart Copeland and guitarist Andy Summers dubbing their parts on.
We were ending up backing a singer doing his pop songs.The album opens with "Spirits in the Material World", featuring keyboards dubbed over Summers' reggae-inspired guitar licks.
"Hungry for You (J'aurais toujours faim de toi)" is sung mostly in French, with the bass and saxophones both repeating a single 8-note melody for the length of the song, while the guitar maintains a steady beat.
"Demolition Man", the band's longest song—almost six minutes in length—features a prominent bass line and saxophone, and was written by Sting while staying at Peter O'Toole's Irish mansion.
[12] A solo recording by Sting became a belated hit in 1993 as the theme song for the action film of the same title, starring Sandra Bullock, Sylvester Stallone and Wesley Snipes.
[14] In the 2012 Can't Stand Losing You: Surviving the Police documentary, Summers commented that the title felt fitting as he was going through a divorce at the time and the band was not getting along during production.
"[26] In Record Mirror, Robin Smith praised the album as "the best thing they've ever done", noting its "overall sense of dedication and quality" and more varied range of musical styles.
[25] Robert Christgau of The Village Voice remarked: "It's pointless to deny that they make the chops work for the common good—both their trickiness and their simplicity provide consistent pleasure here.
"[30] Smash Hits critic Mark Ellen was less receptive, deeming it a "patchy" album with both "dazzling singles" and filler tracks reminiscent of the band's earlier material.
[31] In a retrospective review of Ghost in the Machine, Greg Prato of AllMusic observed that the Police "had streamlined their sound to focus more on their pop side and less on their trademark reggae-rock.
"[21] J. D. Considine, writing in 2004's The New Rolling Stone Album Guide, stated that "well-modulated" compositions such as "Spirits in the Material World" and "Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic" reflected the band's continued experimentation with more dynamic rhythms.
[36] Writing in 2021 for a Best Albums of 1981 list, Paste magazine contributor Saby Reyes-Kulkarni observed that "There are albums that envelope you in an ambience so unlike anything else you’ve ever heard that listening to them is like taking a trip to another world," further describing Ghost in the Machine as "the most sonically unified work of [The Police's] career, a seamless and revolutionary integration of reggae into [the band's style] that, like Talking Heads and Peter Gabriel, established a futurist vision of pop that could absorb sounds from all over the world—in some ways, pop music has operated from the same premise ever since.