Ghost Orchid – An Introduction to EVP: The album that turns the voices of ghosts into sound
Cultural dissonance is a fine thing—especially when it concerns hauntology. Sitting firmly at one table is the idea that the afterlife not only exists but crosses over into real life in the form of ghosts and spirits. On a bench at the opposite side of the cafeteria sits the trivial minds, the ones who prefer cutesy animated versions of ghosts and macabre aesthetics over any scientific data presented by the paranormal investigators.
Of course, nothing is that binary or literal, but the point is that society has a knack for categorising things into subsets, where paranormal research and consumerist fascination sit at opposite corners. In the scientific realm, however, the so-called experts have worked hard for decades to try to prove that such inexplicable occurrences exist and that there is a real historical and factual aspect to the world’s eternal endearment of ghostly figures.
The Ghost Orchid: an Introduction to EVP is not the first project to blend “reality” with the musical art form—researchers and subjects have been converging the disturbing facets of life and mentality for a long while—but it certainly appeared to be the first of its kind to apply real findings to the conventions of experimental music. At its most basic, this record comprises a collage of captured poltergeist voices and activity, using samples that have been reproduced, sourcing credited research to demonstrate the abilities of the Electronic Voice Phenomenon (EVP).
Aside from the bits and pieces of jargon, the collection is said to capture the existence of life after death and the fact that something inexplicable undoubtedly lies beneath the veil beyond our everyday world. Sceptics might listen to the CD and render it nothing more than your usual occurrences when ghost-hunting—it was the breeze peering from an open window, a floor-board creaking, a trapped bird, mice, trespassers, thuds of an old, decayed building, and so on—but regardless of authenticity, there’s a definite eeriness to the entire recording.
Some of the sounds that can be heard appear faint, as you might expect, while others contain unsettling static sounds and jumbled speech, almost like you’ve accidentally stumbled across a broken radio transmitter in between stations. From start to finish, the atmosphere is—you guessed it—haunting, providing an atmosphere filled with barely audible musings from various sources of material.
However, the trick is not to go into this project expecting anything resembling your usual rotation of listening. An Introduction to EVP isn’t a record in the usual sense; it borrows some aspects of musical enjoyment, but it is intensely distorted from start to finish, which is entirely characteristic of EVP but unnatural to the untrained human ear.
In terms of genuineness, it’s likely always going to be unclear whether what An Introduction to EVP presents is, in fact, real, but that largely depends on which side of the cafeteria you sit. If you are someone who firmly sits with the pop culturalists and enjoys the sinister aspects of life through the filtered lens of entertainment, it’s probably not going to hit home. If you’re more interested in the scientific research of paranormal investigators, this record is a goldmine.
And if, like many, you occupy the space somewhere in the middle—The Cure record in one hand and a book on the history of the paranormal in the other—it’s probably best to let An Introduction to EVP make you feel most uncomfortable in a charmingly unsettling way.
