Ash 7.5 | Three Questions and an Answer
Ash Internation # Ash 7.5
Cassette only, in a limited edition of 104 copies.
Tracklist
Angel c/w Ghost
Commissioned as part of “Psychometry” (The Space Between Seeing and Knowing is Haunted), an exhibition curated by D–L Alvarez at Exile and Arratia, Beer, Berlin [07.02.2009 – 04.04.2009]. Arranged and produced by Philip Marshall. Voices sourced from “The Ghost Orchid – an Introduction to EVP” [PARC, 1999]. Rain recordings courtesy of Dale Cornish. Photography by Eddie Nuttall.
Philip Marshall's soundscape "Three Questions and an Answer" is an immersive elegy to the noises that you never notice. The ghosts of our time found, easily and not-so-easily, in the everyday.
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www.ashinternational.com
www.philipmarshall.com
"Three Questions and an Answer" is a response to D-L Alvarez's fascination with a low-budget film made of a real-life plane crash in the Florida Everglades in 1972. "The Ghost of Flight 401" features the ghost of the dead pilot who reappears on planes which have in them some of the salvaged parts of his aircraft.
The Ghost of Flight 401 is on ten low resolution videotapes. Marshall's work is based on one of those tapes… you hear:
1. The hiss of the videotape Marshall was given for his part in Psychometry. The tape is a copy of a copy of a copy of a copy. "I've taken an all-too-literal approach," says Marshall of the way he has approached this project.
2. Ghost recordings, or, in the jargon of those who do this work, EVP (electronic voice phenomena). Taken from Ash International's "The Ghost Orchid - An Introduction to EVP" (PARC CD1, 1999), these are the sonic equivalent of UFOs, unexplained noises recorded with specialised equipment from electronic sources, televisions, radios, telephones. Are they hoaxes? Are they real? Are there ghosts around you from Flight 401?
3. Rain. Flight 401 crashed in a rainstorm. The sound of the rain endured even as people died in the Florida Everglades.
4. More hiss; from the cassette on which the piece is played. "It's a tribute to tape. Cassettes have a sentimental link to the idea of handing down, to sources re-recorded over and over, compiled to be passed on. I used to spend hours compiling C90s for friends of favourite music." That era has passed. The hiss of the cassette in a gallery is now just another memory.
"Three Questions and an Answer" invites you in and envelopes you in a mysterious world. It is available, in a limited edition of 104 cassettes, from Ash International, via touchshop.org
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