listening
I’ve fallen a bit behind sharing extracts but these are some things I heard earlier this year.
In my studio I notice the radiator is gurgling like a churning stomach. As I listen more closely I discern three distinct layers of sound.
Read MoreNeolithic Cannibals has received the top honour in the 'Composed with Sound' category at this year’s Sound of the Year Awards, an international celebration of innovative sound judged by leading experts from across the global sound community. I’m so proud of Amelia, Amy, Gracie-May, Harry, Izzy, Leonie, Ieuan, Sophia, and Tassia. Young artists from an area where it is very hard to become an artist, let alone make award winning contemporary art.
“This project was deeply personal. My aim was to co-create something bold and uncompromising with these young artists—a work that resonates in a gallery space as experimental sound art, serves as a window into history and heritage, and prompts curiosity with contemporary social issues. Through imaginative and fantastical soundscapes, we encouraged audiences, who might otherwise overlook Brighton’s class divisions, to explore these disparities through listening”
I also want to thank Curtis and Carlie at Class Divide for opening up the conversation around class in Brighton and nationally and all the work they do to level the playing field in education and attainment. Andrew Comben at Brighton Festival commissioned the work and Lighthouse co-produced and hosted the exhibition. Emily Macaulay at Stanley James Press took my ideas for the gallery and design and realised them brilliantly. I was so lucky to work with her. Curtis also created the amazing visuals - a collage of archive material, drone footage and sequences of glowing Cymatics that represented the shape of the Neolithic Causewayed Enclosure.
Find out more about the Sound of the Year Awards.
Curtains of water shimmer in fading light. Distinct zones of white noise showers.
Drips, splats, trickles, droplets, flow.
Wind activated waves of intensity, the outside swaying, rippling trees blown in through the huge jagged stone window in a wash of noise that fills the entire sound spectrum.
Every surface damp.
Listening to Cathedral Cave. Words and field recordings over on my Substack.
Emily explores the cave. Photo by Curtis James.
The writing was originally published in Boulderdash Zine 1 available here. Already on to their 4th edition, Boulderdash presents writing around the themes of Stones, Drones and Noise. Highly recommend checking it out.
I started a listening journal in September 2023 whilst on a residency in the Pyrenees. It wasn’t my first attempt to make ‘no microphone’* recordings, but it began a sustained period of recording sounds using words. Maybe it’s because it is relatively new compared to recording using microphones, which I’ve been doing for decades, but I’ve found the process has become my favourite way of connecting with listening.
My listening journal comes everywhere with me, and the feeling of opening it up to make a new entry is calming and invites a quiet focus I struggle to find anywhere else. I try to record in the moment rather than from memory, and find that this promotes a deeper listening and connection with the world around me, getting really inquisitive about what I’m hearing; the texture, rhythm, timbre, acoustics, time and spatial dynamics as well as exploring aspects of relationships, memories and place.
There is often no context in entries, just simple noting of things I’ve heard, with an attempt to record something of the character and detail of the sound. Sometimes it is important to describe the sound source and sometimes that won’t be so clear.
This is practice for me. Writing and listening.
I’m going to share extracts each month and begin with August’s recordings. I’m considering a number of bonus/subscriber content ideas including monthly extracts from the past year’s archive and an actual audio recording that accompanies each month’s extracts.
I’d be interested to hear if any of these recordings resonate with you and hope they might invite you to listen to the world in different ways. I owe a huge debt to Pauline Oliveros and other Deep Listening practitioners I’ve been fortunate enough to learn from and good friend and mentor Angus Carlyle, whose writing about sound has been inspirational.
*I read this term for the first time in Dirty Ear Report #2 last week. James Webb uses it to describe pretty much what I’m doing here.
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