"The initial idea was that this collaboration should reflect a dialogue between two artists who have not yet met and that it should express something about the gulf between them, both literally and metaphorically. In the exchange of materials and ideas something is inevitably lost along the way – whether it be misunderstandings due to interpretation, language, slippage of meaning or simply things going astray. From the outset we decided to make a feature out of what might be lost in this interchange due to physical distance and the passage of time, and to devise a process that would make this evident.

Sending batches of unspooled quarter inch tape to each other in the post we made the decision to include a magnet in the package that, over the time it took for it to be delivered, would randomly erase parts of the tapes that it came into close proximity with. Each fragment of tape included a self-determined sound miniature – a short audio sketch or recording experiment. Over the course of a year we accrued heaps of these degraded, partially eroded tape fragments. We would each make a copy of the tapes prior to sending, and on receiving them weeks later the other would decrypt what remained of the sounds at the other end, playing back and recording the tapes digitally.

To further open the process up to chance it was decided that whatever minute past the hour the tape was recorded at would be noted and that in the final arrangement of materials it would appear at that exact point within an hour-long timeline. In the compositional stage the changes in state between the original recording and its degraded ‘ghost’ counterpart were highlighted through extreme stereo separation and hard panning. The bringing together of these fragments on the timeline to mix and arrange the piece was also the first time we met in person after a year of this remote sound correspondence. Up until this point, neither of us had any clue about how these elements would sit together, whether the juxtapositions would work or not, whether the process would bear fruit or turn out to be a complete disaster." - Mark Vernon