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 hope-themed piece I created in September 2020 for The Dark Outside.
A piece inspired by my recent forays into radio, which I created for The Dark Outside in September 2020.
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.
I submitted a piece to and/OAR’s callout “Muted Stories”. It made it into the 3rd compilation, track #6, “In Light”.
Original call-out (no longer available on their site): https://web.archive.org/web/20210210222706/http://www.and-oar.org/muted_stories_intro_and_guidelines.html