Disquiet

Sound documentarian Will Montgomery ventured into the boiler room for his entry in the Touch Radio series (touchradio.org.uk). Montgomery recorded the hissing and clacking and otherwise deeply resonant doings of an underground heating system whose construction dates from the tail end of the Cold War (MP3). Like most entries in the Touch Radio podcast, Montgomery’s is at its core a field recording, but unlike the majority of Touch Radio efforts, his is not entirely devoid of his own touch — while the material is all raw field recordings, the noises have, as he puts it, “been organised into a composition” — one that has a narrative quality, a journey deeper and deeper into the paranoid. More info, including photos of the site, at touchradio.org.uk.

By Marc Weidenbaum