Ash International

[FreakAnimalFinland]

Was listening to Ash International 1.4 LP. Unknown artists. LP consist only "illegal recordings made in 1978 at an American Air Force base somewhere in England". Release is plain white sleeve, while label, with small insert including more details. There are few short moments of rough noises and sounds of planes flying around, but release is almost exclusively broken signals of radio scanners. Static hiss, crackles, blurred announcements of numbers. Just documentary recording, not really processed to become "art".

Who's been following this label? From early stuff, SCANNER utilizes same sort of sounds, but in more artistic way. Combined with electronics. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0uXt7XHcMVo

Lots of eerie ambient sounds has been released on label which is still active. BJNilsen who was one half of JANITOR (couple releases on Tesco) has done new stuff on the label too. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ar6Fcypxa2U
Perhaps he is also better known as HAZARD who did CD for Malignant back in 1996 and after that several CD's for Ash International. Or as Morthound, which should be well known from Cold Meat releases.

Some of more obscure releases of label interest me quite a bit, but at the same time I'm quite turned off by easy listening ambient or sort of "cosmic music". Can't really adjust into mood of ever listening stuff like S.E.T.I. for example.

Experiences of their more challenging & odd recordings?

[re:evolution]

I have always taken/ appreciated the output of Ash International largely in the same context as Touch (as they have the same label bosses).

To date I have mostly skirted around the edges of their catalogues (both Ash and Touch) and checked out the Hazard ('North' is amazing), BJ Nilsen releases, as well as later era Fennesz who has produced some strong output. The later era Thomas Koner has also been great in expanding the 'isolationist ambient' template.

But one of the weirdest releases I found was by 'Nana April Jun' with an album called 'The Ontology Of Noise' (on Touch). When it came out in 2009 there was a theoretical promo blurb about taking the core essence of black metal sonics into experiential fields.  In the end all it was, was sampling an abstract feedback back riff from Burzum's Filosofem album and then bending into unrecognisable realms.  Pretty ho hum overall. 

I am sure there is plenty of great stuff in both of their label catalogues - even if more 'academically' minded - just not enough hours in he day or $.....

[CMSFoundation]

Most of Ash International's output is pretty straightforward and makes sense as a spinoff to Touch, but they had a strangely mischievous streak at the start which I really appreciated. My favorite from that time is the "Runaway Train" 1-sided LP. Nice quality cover, an insert, and a record that is an untreated tape recording of an incident in 1948 in which a train in Canada lost control of its brakes as it was speeding toward a train terminal where loads of passengers were standing. It's about 25 minutes long, and you spend the entire time in a state of rapt panic as the two of them try to find a way to re-route the train onto a line where it's not going to jump the tracks and crash into hundreds of people. The whole recording is just CB radio transmissions back and forth between the engineer and the person at the station trying to help with loads of eerie silences (when one person is trying to get answers for the other) and static. I think at its fastest, the train is going 80 to 120 miles per hour. Also, like the air force base record Mikko mentions above, it's steeped with old technical noises (radio glitching, CB static, distorted voices, test tones) and eerie ambiance.

(Correction: just looked this up, and it appears Ash Int. was lying. The event happened in 1987, not 1948. A very detailed website about the event here: http://www.cwrr.com/Lounge/Feature/runaway/)

Listen to the whole thing on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpiGrwUwdh0

[CMSFoundation]

There's also the Lem Tuggle "Breakout" tape that came out on Ash. Here's the liners:

In March 1984, six men escaped from Virginia's most secure prison. It remains the only mass escape from death row in US history. This recording was made on death row by Lem D. Tuggle with a pocket cassette recorder hidden in his cell. As a guard approached his cell, Lem had to stop recording, thus accounting for the few breaks in the sound. The tape was removed from the cassette shell and smuggled out by letter.

The Daily Telegraph 14th December 1996:
"The last surviving member of a jail gang which featured in America's biggest breakout from death row has been executed in Jarrett, Virginia. Asked if he had any last words, Len (sic) Tuggle, 44, replied, "Merry Christmas."

Tuggle and five others escaped in 1984 in stolen guard uniforms. All were recaptured and the others have since been executed." [David Sapstead, New York]

[Pax Chetyorka]

I highly recommend Friedrich Jürgenson's "From The Studio For Audioscopic Research", a collection of EVP recordings he made from 1959 - 1985.
There's a great flow to it, even though there's 57 tracks. Anyone into radio noise and loops should enjoy it.

It's one of the few albums that make me paranoid at night, and I got used to The Conet Project's freakier moments!