War Sounds Mashup

Do you ever wish there was a random soundtrack for every google search that you do? I might just sound like this. Listen:




I just did a simple experiment. I typed in "war" into the search engine at freesound.org to see what would pop up. I was listening to the tracks one by one, but then I started playing them on top of one another. You can play as many as you want at the same time using freesound.org's embedded player, generating an instant mashup.

In the first 15 results of "war", I was delighted by the diversity of sounds. First you get what you might expect: air raid sirens, bombers, gunfire and explosions. But also: George W Bush, angry soccer fans, a cheezy laser cannon, and a benign ship's bell from the HMS Chepstow. In the following version, I spread out the clips with about a three second offset, in the order they appeared in the search list:




Credit for the individual samples goes to: guitarguy1985, ljudman, digifishmusic, acclivity, EcoDTR, m:o, and daveincamas.


p.s. I borrow inspiration from the sound artist Chris Kubick who has used folly libraries and Supercollider to generate some pretty fascinating landscapes.

Rubble Mountains

Rubble mountains. One can only imagine the sound of a rubble mountain under 'construction'. Rubble mountains are everywhere, under your feet, under buildings; they are underground mountains. What is anything we call ground but some form or rubble, of various sizes, 'destroyed'particles, aggregates of something else reconstituted as a new landscape.

Berlin's Teufelsberg is the largest rubble mountain in the city. I am walking up to the top and observing the activities found there. Listen:



Skies over rubble mountains. I am listening to the radio. Listen:



Tubes beneath rubble mountains. The U-Bahn. Listen:

Red Sands Boat Trip

As seen on BLDG BLOG, my wife and I took a boat trip out to see these incredible structures leftover from WWII. The day was filled with some unexpected events, such as the lowering of a broken windmill turbine onto the boat, using an old crane arm from one of the towers. On board, in awe of these hulking towers of rusting steel, will be a couple hours of my life that I will never forget.

Here's but a small sample of the sounds recorded out there. Listen:

20: Netherlands Sound Matter

Following after one of my favorite sound artists, Francisco Lopez, as I record sound I am collecting the matter of sound. Lopez writes in an essay titled "This is Not La Selva: Sound Matter vs. Representation":

In my conception, sound recording does not document or represent a richer and more significant "real" world. Rather, it focuses on the inner world of sounds.

Both of the samples presented here are unaltered from their recording. There is only one layer, and that is the recording itself. If you detect multiple layers, that is architecture that you are bringing to the experience of listening.

In the first sample, an escalator outside Rotterdam's Central Station aspires to join an urban drum circle. Listen:




The second sample is from a train station ticket machine in Haarlem. Listen: