Taking apart the sounds of my birthplace

Published on: 16th June 2014 Published in: Cities & Memory

I was born in Leicester but I never lived there, so Leicester market has a peculiar resonance for me. I should by rights probably have quite a thick Leicester accent, but I don’t have anything like it (in fact, my accent is irritatingly regionless apart from a few northern hard ‘a’ sounds). Leicester market (complete with stall run by Gary Lineker’s parents, fact fans) is a proper fruit ‘n’ veg marker complete with sing-song sales pitches and proper Leicester accents on all sides. On a recent visit, I made several walkthroughs recording the sounds of the market, and it was the rhythm of the sing-song sales that stood out alongside the distinctive accent – and the fact that this recording is pinned to a time of year by the constant calls about ‘English straw-brees’. So to remix this was a simple matter of trying to deconstruct the songs and reassemble rhythms out of them, and to morph the accent into some ambient sounds.