The semi-obscene, rubbery bending. The almost comically resilient resounding of a metal surface. The shushing noise of texture. There is something sensual, in a very direct way, to “Under the River Paiva” by Andrea Parkins. She recorded it at Nodar, Portugal, as source audio for a broader project. The sounds are all from beneath the surface of water, all recorded with a hydrophone. Writes Parkins of the context for “Under the River Paiva”:
It features filtering created by placement of objects and movement of the hydrophones in the riverbed’s rocky crevices. The recording later became part of my 12-channel sound design for Symptom, a multi-disciplinary work directed by US-based choreographers The Body Cartography Project, presented in 2011 at CounterPulse, SF in 2012 and in 2011 at The Coil Festival, NYC.
Track originally posted at soundcloud.com/andreaparkins. More from Parkins, who is based in New York City, at soundcloud.com/andreaparkins. More on the Coil performance at ps122.org.