From bird calls to rattling dishes, from muffled voices to rumbling industrial dissonance, the sounds that initially comprise “Stateless” by Zahra Jewanjee and Simon Coates are those that often go unnoticed. Even when gathered together, as they are here, these sounds are easily mistaken for background. You listen to “Stateless” and, except at the most dramatic moments, wonder whether the sounds, the overheard conversations, are part of the piece, or are things intruding from beyond your earbuds. That’s at least at the start. As time passes, as the piece proceeds, the voices get more determined, telling stories that are difficult to ignore, and the sounds get cut up, quick-edit bits of glitch and everyday media noise, advertisements and passing cars combining into travelogues.
https://soundcloud.com/radius-17/episode-40
Track originally posted for download as part of the Radius project at soundcloud.com and theradius.us. More on Jewanjee, who is from Pakistan, and Coates, who is from England, at jewanjeeandcoates.com. The pair live in Dubai.