Last week we were lucky enough to get a whole load of submissions from a South African sound artist called Tristan, who composes and performs under the name Restive (check out his other sounds). He produced an extensive sound installation using field recordings from around Cape Town and his own music, and submitted some special edits for Cities and Memory, allowing us to present to you a mini-sound map of Cape Town composed entirely of Restive’s sounds.

The first two we’ll concentrate on today are from the iconic Table Mountain, with two extensive field recordings from there, which mix beautifully with a second set of field recordings and Restive’s own ambient sounds. He explains the idea behind the installation and what you’ll hear in the sounds:

“I presented an audio installation in a gallery in Cape Town (where I live), which consists of 6 channels of audio (3x stereo) of several hours of field recordings made in and around Cape Town, mixed together with other, purely sonic material. The material is roughly divided into 3 sections (3 playback devices); the first consists of field recording of man-made sounds (streetscapes, malls, etc), the second of ‘natural’ sounds (forest, water, etc.) while the third is material taken from my own catalogue of work. The 3 playback devices are of unequal length (roughly 3+, 4+ & 5+ hours individually) and are set to random playback, so at any point, a unique combination of the 3 elements is produced. With access to all the sound files, it might be possible for anyone to recreate the installation on 3 separate devices.”

We present selected edits from Restive’s installation in four chapters, starting with Table Mountain.

City version one:

 

Memory version one:

 

City version two:

 

Memory version two:

 

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