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imomus
I love radio that uses sound evocatively. For instance, this excellent Radio 3 Sunday Feature about the artist Donald Judd, or the programmes made by Arte Radio. Inspired by examples like these, I've decided to do an audio blog today. It's basically all the little lofi sound files I've been capturing with my digital camera since coming to Japan in mid-July, dropped into iTunes randomly then cross-faded. It gives a rather evocative sound picture of the archipelago, I think. I've concentrated on street cries, children's songs, the sounds of nature in summer, and all the little electronic melodies that float in the air in Japanese cities, accompanying activities as banal as collecting rubbish or crossing the road. The isle is full of noises...
Japan Sound Collage, Summer 2004 (24.72 MB mp3 file, 21.35 minutes, 160 kbps, mono)
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Great!
Date: 2004-08-13 10:43 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-13 10:44 am (UTC)I had a friend in college who biked though Central America with a tape recorded. He has great songs of street bands, with chickens and dogs and kids in the background.
Wish I had made copies...
(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-13 10:48 am (UTC)Another great thing to me are radioplays or audiobooks. it's so good to be entertained while having your hands and eyes free for other things.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-13 11:14 am (UTC)would be nice to have permlinks in this blog.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-13 11:33 am (UTC)http://www.livejournal.com/users/imomus/2004/08/14/
The BBC and Arte links should be relatively permanent. The BBC one is the specific documentary I mention, which will open in a BBC Realplayer window. The Arte one is to the HTML version of their site, because I'm somewhat anti-Flash.
soundcollage
Date: 2004-08-13 11:52 am (UTC)permlink in audio-blog I meant. This file is an audio map of your walk, right (chopped up and reconstructed after)? So, theres a number of ways to make permlinks associated with "places" you visited.
Re: soundcollage
Date: 2004-08-13 12:01 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-13 12:15 pm (UTC)but orange is user-unfriendly
probably it was done long time ago too, when digital cameras and cell phones werent avaliable?
(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-13 12:18 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-13 12:41 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-14 05:15 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-13 12:39 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-13 02:24 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-13 02:52 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-14 03:39 am (UTC)now, this would make an awfull soundscape.
A thousand twangling instruments
Date: 2004-08-14 06:35 am (UTC)For those to whom field recordings are a new adventure, or for longtime aficianados of such esoterica, I can enthusiastically recommend a good website to begin: "The Quiet American," owned and operated by Aaron Ximm. The site has downloadable mp3s of dozens of hours of field recordings (some pure, some not) from across southeast Asia and America. Put on your earphones and take a very cheap vacation. Here's the link:
http://www.quietamerican.org
Re: A thousand twangling instruments
Date: 2004-08-14 06:55 am (UTC)Right, now I'm going to check out quietamerican.org.
Re: A thousand twangling instruments
Date: 2004-08-14 07:20 am (UTC)It's easy to miss some interesting things on the Quiet American site, including information about an upcoming compilation of "walking music":
"Drifting: walking music is the working name for a proposed compilation to consist entirely of field recordings made while walking, running or otherwise ambulatory (wheelchairs welcome)...
"A majority of [field] recordings are made from a stationary position. The effect of this convention on the listener are an unremarked, unchallenged presumption of (i) objectivity in the recording, and (ii) the invisibility of the recordist. Walking recordings foreground the active role the recordist plays, and remind us that as in photography, every recording has a frame.
"Walking with the intention to drift is a particularly liberating experience; reproducing something of the joyous serendipity of such drifting is the goal of the compilation: as is encouraging the listener to get up, get out and listen (and record!) themselves."
Sounds like a good soundtrack to the book I'm reading now, "Wanderlust, A History of Walking" by Rebecca Solnit.
Re: A thousand twangling instruments
Date: 2004-08-14 07:29 am (UTC)Re: A thousand twangling instruments
Date: 2004-08-15 06:58 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-14 11:19 am (UTC)Your entry is so good. in a day of listening to songs you love but heard a lot, finding and listening to random collection of song-sounds is very refreshing. thank you.
I also would like to ask a question – what type digital camera do you use? or maybe if you thought about it what digital camera would you want if you wanted a new one? the choices on these things are so many so a little advice from a you, who always has your camera going would be cool!
!!
(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-14 03:46 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-14 04:38 pm (UTC)hey there
Date: 2004-08-15 12:06 am (UTC)you have a wonderful journal, hope you don't mind i added you to my friends list :o)
-sherine
this...
Date: 2004-08-15 10:59 am (UTC)this is so you, Nick, les ambiances, les ballades.... c'est vraiment tres personnel et tres beau.
Et vive Osaka ! (on se voit un jour cette semaine ?)
Antonin
Realism, reborn?
Date: 2004-08-15 06:46 pm (UTC)It reminds me a bit of the suprematists and abstract painters around the same era, with the same thought-process. Realism was over and the "Will" as Schopenhauer put it was best expressed choppily through images without even direct symbolic value.
Nowadays we've passed through reactionary irony to a post-modern view of realism. Capturing the beauty of the natural world (even the natural industrial world) by expressing it through itself directly isn't new, but somehow you render it so by your medium... I've seen it done with painting, but not really with "music."
It's very interesting to see this, as it is in metaphysics, "neo-realist" perspective in sound. Truly, you are a pioneer!
(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-15 11:36 pm (UTC)I don't have headphones with me to listen to this now and I'm in a somewhat noisy cafe, but the concept reminds me of a 16mm
film diary of a Japan trip by Jonas Mekas in the early 70's.
Truly wonderful little film can't find the title or link right now. Lots of Banpaku-era nostagia.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-16 03:46 am (UTC)hello sir.
i'm faced with the first big like, moral dilemma of my, em, career, and i'd like to know what you think, since it concerns stuff that's been talked about in this journal.
This tuesday we're playing a big big event for the first time, vjing for 2manydjs and lcd soundsystems. it's a great opportunity.
but
the event is sponsored by tobacco brand
tobacco brand wants us to put some animations with their logo from time to time.
which sucks.
refusal would mean our all important relationship with club promoters go sour etc etc.
dilemma made more poignant because one of the members of our team is in the hospital due to some tobacco related tonsils infection.
money-minded partner says we do it without question.
i say we do it but subtly making tobacco brand appear uncool somehow.(any ideas?)
friend says we're going to have bad karma for a while if we do that and i believe it.
any comments, past experiences, advice, nick, anyone?i know it's not such a big deal, we're just the little fingers of a big machinery that's not going to stop because of our refusal to be part of it, but it still sucks big time
(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-16 06:35 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-16 07:35 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-17 11:23 pm (UTC)as i expected, we just unconsciously forgot about the tobacco clips because they didn't fit into the set and nobody noticed their absence, what with the shows being good and everything, but the question is still there and doesn't look like it's going to go away easily. there's that Diogenes story, in which he's eating lentils outside in athenes, lentils being the cheapest meal at the time, and his former schoolmate Do'ntrememberhisnamedes, who is now a succesful politician tells him "oh diogenes diogenes, if you were a bit more submissive and were nice to the emperor you wouldn't have to eat lentils" and diogenes answers
"well if you ate lentils you wouldn't have to be submissive and be nice to the emperor"
(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-16 11:05 am (UTC)i talked to my partners about my concerns. They dissed them as bourgeois and neo-hippie and made the good point that in order to do constructive stuff you need money and if you don't have it the only way to get it is to sell out in one way or the other.
the money we'll get will barely cover our debts with phone companies and film developing studios, but that's still a good point.
Fortunately, the club's promoters don't like the idea of polluting the screens with tobacco imagery either so they've told us to keep it subtle and restrain from using it as much as possible. The dvd of clips they've given us are very very cheesy and seeing it in its entirety would make anyone hate the brand forever, so i wonder if the opposite aproach wouldn't be more appropiate!
(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-16 02:24 pm (UTC)Isn't that justification of 'selling out' the very definition of bourgeois thinking, though?