  cover art  Auburn Lull  Cast from the Platform  (Darla; US: 7
Jun 2004; UK: 27 May 2004)  Somewhere lost in the long horizons
of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula a man sits atop a rusted trailer
and aims an antenna into the persistent grey of the evening sky.
He holds an ancient transmitter close to his ear and listens for
a declaration from the heavens. Isolated far above the lake, he
finds comfort in the vigil. For those who traffic in vastness,
there is a longing for contact from a world more vast than their
own. Late into the early morning, he discovers something moving
behind the static, something ghostly but musical: the pulsing of
keyboards and the rap of simple percussion. Soon there is a
voice, or maybe a more than a voice, a chorus of whispers. At
times it is nothing more than rise and fall of otherworldly
noise. Later on, there is cello.  Hundreds of miles away in the
collegiate abodes of Lansing, a much larger antenna broadcasts
signal into the loneliness. Believing her listeners to have long
since re