Musique concrète / sound collage. I was interested in isolating and exploring the 3 most prominent sounds in the recording: the sizzling sounds of cooking, the conversation, and the noises from various objects being moved around and being used. 

I was able to split the audio out into 4 separate channels with the help of Demucs. In places I have integrated some samples from my own field recordings too. Who is Mr. Ōizumi? You’ll have to ask the people in the restaurant.

You can listen to the original field recording by Zion Bai (https://soundcloud.com/zion-bai) below.

Japan’s culinary culture has its own unique style, with both food preparation techniques and dining practices continually evolving through exploration and innovation.

The recording location for ‘Omakase – Dining Environment’ is at an Omakase restaurant in Tokyo. The literal meaning of Omakase is ‘I leave it to you.’ The chef presents a series of dishes, starting from the lightest to the heaviest, and ending with dessert. During this experience, customers do not need to place orders; they simply wait for the chef to serve what they have prepared. 

Patrons who choose the Omakase style expect innovation and surprises from the chef’s menu selection, turning the meal into an artistic performance. Some may even view it as a form of ‘gambling’ because customers do not know what the next dish will be. 

Throughout the dining experience, there is minimal communication between customers and the chef. The chef informs the customer of each dish’s name, and the customer enjoys the meal.

Cities and Memory is one of the world’s biggest sound projects, a global, collaborative sound art and field recording programme with the aim of remixing the world, one sound at a time. It covers more than 125 countries and territories with more than 6,000 sounds and more than 1,800 contributing artists.

Cities and Memory have just released their bandcamp compilation, “Sounds of the Year 2021”. I’m so stoked that track number 6 by Vlad Suppish was included. He used my field recording as inspiration and the only source material for his piece and the results are simply wonderful. The entire album is beautiful – well worth a listen, and is currently available for name-your-price.

My original field recording is here:

Valparaiso city ambience reimagined (based on an original field recording by Stuart Fowkes).

I wanted to create a sound collage progressing from the most natural parts of the original recording through to the most man-made, representing the uncontrolled development of a city, getting louder and more chaotic, and eventually spiralling out of control. 

A critical mass is reached leading to a sudden change and return to nature. Whether this change is due to a disaster or a breakthrough is left undecided.

Part of the Future Cities project – find out more at https://www.citiesandmemory.com/future-cities

You can hear the original field recording by Stuart here: https://audioboom.com/posts/7528171-hovering-above-the-city

A piece inspired by my recent forays into radio, which I created for The Dark Outside in September 2020.

A hope-themed piece I created in September 2020 for The Dark Outside.

One of my field recordings was featured in episode #5 (warning, strong language) of the Radio Philoxenia show.

Sound artists and musicians all over the world “produced a series of compositions inspired by individual works from the Smithsonian collection, the world’s largest museum complex – reimagining images and scenes of history, art, science and culture through sound” — Cities and Memory

I chose the item pictured to the right. Since it was sheet music I immediately wanted to know how it sounded. I could not find any version of the music anywhere online, and trying to play it myself was a very slow process. So I downloaded some software that could scan sheet music to MIDI. The music was corrupted in the process and I decided to work with this and explore how the music sounded with different voices and with different tempos. The resulting piece is 5 minutes long but only represents perhaps 10-12 bars of the original. To add texture I incorporated an unfinished project which was my first attempt at creating an ambient/drone piece.

Here is the result:

You can listen to all the pieces here: https://citiesandmemory.com/smithsonian/.

My lockdown-themed piece “Take Stock” was broadcast on furtherin.live as part of The Dark Outside, March/April 2020.

The piece will not be made available online but you can find out more about The Dark Outside here: https://www.darkoutside.co.uk/about.

I contributed a sound piece to the Cities and Memory project “Three Words”.

Read more about the project and see the sound map on the Cities and Memory page: http://citiesandmemory.com/three-words. You can find my piece at the Reykjavik Art Museum.

If you have trouble finding it, here is a direct link to my piece: https://audioboom.com/posts/7398751-portal-to-chodov.

Also, here’s a direct link to the original recording by Richard Watts. https://audioboom.com/posts/7398743-reykjavik-art-museum

My sound piece “For The Trees” was included in a 24 hour radio broadcast in Epping Forest on the day of the summer solstice.

The piece will not be shared as it was intended as a one-off for anybody who tuned in.

See https://wfculture19.co.uk/events/The-dark-outside for details of the event.