The isle is full of noises, sounds and sweet airs that give delight but hurt not

[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)

Comments

A thousand twangling instruments

[xyzedd.livejournal.com]

Extraordinary! I'm listening right now and feel like I've opened an invisible door to another world. What was this about an "ear vacation"? It seems the musician's ears, like the artist's eyes, are always working, like it or not. Thanks again for your constant generosity to your fans, Momus.

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

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Thanks for that comment, xy! Some of the credit should go to iTunes, which played the role of a sort of iChing, a serendipitous aleatory scrambling engine. For instance, the rather incredible moment where the whooping of a troupe of gibbons at Osaka Zoo morphs into a police siren was the work of iChing-iTunes, not me.

Right, now I'm going to check out quietamerican.org.

Re: A thousand twangling instruments

[xyzedd.livejournal.com]

You're welcome, indeed. (I had no idea those were gibbons! And I wonder if that's the ancient sound of a Casio SK-1 toy sampler I hear at some point, which is madeleine to my ears.)

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

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Psychogeography is just sooooo trendy just now, isn't it? But I like the idea of de-objectivising the recording by adding the sound of the recordist. I left in all my scuffles so that you'd hear my presence in the things I taped. A few rustles can create a whole person in the mind's ear.

Re: A thousand twangling instruments

[(Anonymous)]

The iChing of iTunes was at play as clicked the link to this sound file. By chance the first few bars of Spooky Kabuki were playing as the file loaded. When the ambient sound began, I paused iTunes just before the the first verse started. A perfect introduction.