This isn’t new, but it’s worth a listen, especially if you’ve (1) never participated in a soundwalk or (2) not yet read Trevor Cox’s sonic travelogue, Sonic Wonderland: A Scientific Odyssey of Sound. Cox visited the offices of the Guardian and proceeded to take the editors on a blindfolded guided tour — except he was the one in the blindfold, gauging where he was based on what he heard. He also provided an example of how the acoustics of Stonehenge might have impacted the way ritual music was experienced on site, and talked about the evolutionary role of listening and of music:
More recently, just earlier this week, Cox posted an experiment in which he recreated Alvin Lucier’s “I Am Sitting in a Room.” The extravagant reverberation of his rendition is owed to its locale. The recording was made in Inchindown, Scotland, oil tanks, which were recently granted the Guinness World Record for “longest echo”:
Track originally posted for free download at soundcloud.com/guardianbookspodcast. Video at youtube.com.