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[ August 16, 2010 / bookmark ]

field notes / My Liner Notes to the New Landrecorder EP

The Lisbon, Portugal, netlabel feedbacklooplabel.blogspot.com just released a great three-track set by Landrecorder, the British phonographer. FeedbackLoop proprietor Leonardo Rosado (aka twitter.com/sbtrmnl) invited me to write the mini-album’s liner notes, based on his sense that its mix of composed sound and field recordings would entice me. He was by no means mistaken, and he was [...]

[ August 9, 2010 / bookmark ]

downstream / Train Train, 2:32 Long (MP3)

When does a field recording of sound constitute a performance? Perhaps when the field — that is, perhaps when the environment in which the sound itself occurred — serves a role that might be likened to that of a traditional instrument. Phillip Wilkerson posted a recent recording of just such an instance, that of a [...]

[ July 30, 2010 / bookmark ]

downstream / Death, Sound, Words (Scanner MP3s)

A car honks twice, and then what follows is an inundation of descriptions of a grisly automobile accident that has taken the life of a loved one, as well as of the detached bystanders who snap mobile-phone pictures of the splattered corpse. A rector talks at length about the intense, the unknowably demanding, emotional requisites [...]

[ July 26, 2010 / bookmark ]

downstream / Stephen Vitiello’s Collage Enviroment (MP3)

All field recordings are alien, even the most familiar. A close-up recording of a bug or an ice cube has sonic resonances, inherent threat, surprise facets, that are utterly apart from daily experience. To bring a microphone close to something is to witness it at an unprecedented level of detail, and to listen to it [...]

[ July 23, 2010 / bookmark ]

downstream / Real World v. Composed World v. Interior World (MP3)

That’s not how the rules are supposed to work, right? If you’re combining natural sounds and electronic ones, there’s an inherent contrast, the noisy chaos of the “real” world set alongisde the considered organization of the “constructed” one. The real world is the one outside our doors. The constructed one is the one inside our [...]

[ July 18, 2010 / bookmark ]

field notes / Happy World Listening Day

Happy World Listening Day. According to the folks over at worldlisteningproject.org, the purpose of the day is threefold: • to celebrate the practice of listening as it relates to the world around us, environmental awareness, and acoustic ecology • to raise awareness about issues related to the World Soundscape Project, World Listening Project, World Forum [...]

[ July 15, 2010 / bookmark ]

reports/essays / Crosstown Static: Listening to Don DeLillo’s ‘Cosmopolis’

The following essay I wrote, “Crosstown Static,” was published this month in Shadows Have Shadows, a fun little physical newsprint project that resulted from a web-based mailing list in which I participate; the printing was facilitated by the neat newspaperclub.co.uk service. The full issue is also available online for free at shadows-have-shadows.com. As the introduction [...]