R.I.P Graham "Epidose" Marsh

Graham Marsh commited suicide the other day. Being one of my early musical heroes, it was more than a little difficult for me to take. I heard rumours that he had shut himself away and was playing a LOT of WOW. Apearntly he was was suffereing from a mental ilneses, losing his grip on reality and couldn't deal with it anymore.

Here is the letter I sent his brother.

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Hi David,

I was devastated when I learned of Graham's Death. Even though I have never met him, I feel like I know him in a unique way. I have an interesting story I always meant to tell Graham but I never had the chance.

When I was in grade 9 (~1998), I was passed a CD by an older student who knew I was interested in composition wanted me to hear electronic music. She briefly showed sketch and said she was working on a flyer for a show. She was to graduate a few weeks later and I never saw her again.

I didn't know who's music was but I loved it. For the next few years the "Mystery" CD would be a personal favorite. It inspired me to begin producing. I set to work reconstructing his music and figure out how it worked, the rhythms, the common patterns, production techniques etc. With nothing other than some un-released tracks and the memory of a sketch, I had little hope of figuring out who's music I so enjoyed.

A few years later I was accepted into the Composition faculty at the University of Manitoba specializing in electronic music. I walking through a record store and I saw an old poster on the wall close to the floor. The graphic style of the poster caught my eye. The character on the poster reminded me of the sketch I had seen 5 years earlier. I had a word to go on now... "Epidose"

From there, I managed to track down Graham's e-mail after a long Internet search. I briefly contacted him and he was happy to hear from me. He gave me some production advice and some of his newer stuff. He also gave me a bunch of the rough material he used in the creation of his older material.

For the last 2 years I've been playing his music on my show "Samplitude" on UMFM.

Now i'm heading off to do my Masters in Composition at McGill. I always wanted to thank Graham for inspiring me. A lot of my sucess grew out of the hard work in those early years trying to figure out his music. Meeting him in person was on my list of things to do before I moved to Montreal. His music was instrumental in my early development as a producer. His sense of "fun" and clever use of atmosphere will always stick with me.

As someone who has spent a fair amount of time thinking about aesthetics and analyzing music of all types, I can tell you Graham's work is very special. Even after 10 years, I'm still hearing new and interesting things on that first CD.

-Eliot Britton