Published
Ghosts on Magnetic Tape
A los amantes de la parapsicología, el nombre de Konstantin Raudive no les resultará extraño. Tras conocer la obra del pionero sueco Friedrich Jürgenson, se interesó en el nuevo fenómeno de las “psicofonías” en la década de los sesenta siendo uno de los primeros autores en investigar en ese campo obteniendo una extensa colección de grabaciones con supuestas voces del más allá. Esos “fantasmas” captados por la cinta magnética fueron la inspiración de Steven Wilson para realizar uno de los mejores discos grabados bajo el nombre de Bass Communion.
“Ghosts in Magnetic Tape” estaba basado en una serie de viejos discos de 78 rpm que Wilson encontró en el desván de la casa de sus padres. Esas grabaciones de campo, con sonidos ambientales a modo de librería, inspiraron al músico pese a que ni siquiera tenía un equipo adecuado para reproducirlas a la velocidad correcta, teniendo que hacerlo a 45 rpm. A lo largo del trabajo encontramos extensos pasajes en los que podemos escuchar un profundo tratamiento sonoro de esas fuentes de las que Wilson extrae verdaderas maravillas. Esos discos sonando a una velocidad más lenta de lo normal con los ruidos inevitables causados por el deterioro de los mismos a lo largo del tiempo, los saltos, los siseos, etc. conforman una base sonora a partir de la cual, Wilson realiza todo su trabajo.
Si hay algo en el disco que recuerde a las “psicofonías” que mencionábamos al principio es precisamente esta parte (tercera pista).
[LS] Your remix of Bass Communion’s Ghosts on Magnetic Tape album added a weight to an album already thematically loaded with tension and apprehension. How did these remixes come about and what about the original drew you to the task of working with that material? Did you find it difficult to work with and why? Also, what do you think about the subject matter of the original and the existence of these electrical, spectral voices?
[AL] Steven Wilson had been buying my music for some time and he sent me the album. I really liked it and said if one day you are going to do a remix I want to be involved. I started work on a track and sent him the results, more as an exercise and for our amusement rather then any intention to release the recording. Steven rang me up and said he really enjoyed what I had done and why don’t I reconstruct the whole album… so I did.
I found it pretty easy to reconstruct the original as it has many elements of my own music in there, and the album was based on a concept I was very familiar with. I was working on a new way of making music at the time that involved playing the original source at twice the speed backwards and twice as slow forwards at the same time, so it was a bit of an experiment and an aural exercise. I filled the recording with some of the EVP recordings I used on my own EVP inspired release ‘Viva Raudive’ and a lot of recordings I made in a cemetery near my house here in Brighton. The cemetery is vast: Aleister Crowley was cremated there and Count Stenbock is buried there, so I thought it made sense to go down a ‘goth’ route and incorporate some kind of ‘validity.’ Not that I have any concrete beliefs in the occult or supernatural.
With regards to EVP, I am extremely sceptical of there being ‘voices of the dead’, and completely dismiss a two-way conversation with the living and the ‘other side’. I do have certain beliefs and ideas when it comes to such phenomenon, electrical foot prints and some inexplicable memories left like dust particles, but I won’t elaborate too much for fear of making myself look idiotic.
(From an interview with Brainwashed).
https://rateyourmusic.com/list/TKi/ghosts_on_magnetic_tape/1/