This audio study repurposes the abandoned 16-bit software EVPmaker, a granular synthesizer developed in 2000 for use in communication with the beyond. Through randomly scrambling and recombining phonemes, the program allows supernaturally-inclined listeners to hear meaningful phrases, and possibly consort with the discarnate—an extension of the electronic voice phenomenon (EVP), a parapsychological research movement popularized by the Swedish opera singer Friedrich Jürgenson and Latvian academic Konstantīns Raudive.

The piece uses the voices of four country superstars, each a fixture of radio space who forged unique relationships to the paranormal: Porter Wagoner (1927-2007), Conway Twitty (1933-1993), Loretta Lynn (1932-2022), and Tammy Wynette (1942-1998). Appropriated, discombobulated musical segments—an upper-register steel guitar solo reminiscent of John Hughey, an Appalachian folk hymn, and a ‘90s pop-country CD—also each make an appearance. The non-committal title is from a commonly mistranscribed lyric from Porter Wagoner’s “Out of the Silence (Came a Song)” (1967), an early B-side by Dolly Parton who claimed she wrote the tune in a graveyard.

Tune in for selections from Wave Farm's Transmission Art Archive, a specialized online resource of artists' experiments with the electromagnetic spectrum in form or concept. The resource contains primary materials from early microradio broadcast collaborations among Brooklyn-based artists in the mid-nineties, transmission works created by the hundreds of artists who have participated in Wave Farm projects, broadcasts, and residencies, as well as historical and contemporary projects that comprise the canon of the genre.

Visit the Transmission Art Archive here.