Robert Cole Rizzi files this sonic report from wind turbines near where he lives in Kolding, Denmark. The recordings employ the Geofón made by LOM, an instrument company in Bratislava, Slovakia. The Geofón is an especially sensitive microphone, its technology having originated for seismic measurements. In the six tracks that Rizzi posted, we hear the mechanisms and the drones, the death-ambient routinized turbulence, of the wind machines doing their thing. Some of the tracks are quite violent, notably the third, which includes a squeal that on first listen might be mistaken for that of a bird, though the subsequent repetitions makes clear it’s simply a result of the machine turning. While all the tracks have a meditative sameness once they get rolling, they aren’t immune to change. Track five in particular seems to rev up at one point, like it’s suddenly increased power. Many of the tracks have the industrial whir of those extended YouTube videos of the engine room of the Starship Enterprise. The first and fifth are my favorites. If deep gray were a sound, it would sound like these tracks, especially if it were a deep gray that’s rich with imperfections and prone to wear.
Playlist originally posted at soundcloud.com/rizzi. More from Rizzi at twitter.com/RobertColeRizzi.
The evidence suggests that LOM exists solely to aggravate me; by the time I hear they’ve made something I’d love, it’s sold out.
I love the sound of these things! I was lucky enough to stand underneath one on a ranch in Oklahoma and record while it slows to a halt, rotates, and starts back up again. As the blades slowly rotate, you can hear leftover nuts/bolts trickle down the inside of the blades.
Perhaps the whistling on #3 was caused by a bird getting smacked by the blade :-(
Very cool. That makes perfect sense about the leftover nuts and bolts. And um about the bird, too. Um.
No birds were harmed during the recordings – the whistling is all from the blades cutting through the air…