Grasscut. 1inch / 1/2 mile. 2010
Andrew Phillips and Marcus O'Dair of Grasscut do a lot of sampling of archival recordings and picking up sound on cell phones. The name of their most recent cd, 1 inch / 1/2 mile, is a map scale. They walked across southern England at one point. On this disc 'The Tin Man' mixes a metal-on-metal creaking of a sculpture at the Pompidou Centre and a 1927 recording of John McCormack recorded off a wind-up gramophone. The results are haunting, as if one was listening to the past through light years of space and time, which of course, we are.
This piece is 'In Her Pride' – Hilaire Belloc in 1932 sings his poem 'The Winged Horse' where he flies over England, and Ezra Pound reads from 'EP: An Ode' of 1926 on the acceleration of interwar life. Their voices are very robust. This is the only video I could find: I wish the image was as lapidary as the music.