In part one, we heard from 15 field recordists, who shared their favourite recorded sounds. Here, we take a closer look at what they told us and draw some conclusions about the factors that lift an everyday field recording up to the level of a sound you might remember forever.
Over years of field recording, we’ve often pondered the question ‘what makes a field recording special?’ Just what is it that elevates one recording from the everyday to something that makes the hairs stand up on the back of your neck? In this two-part series, we ask fifteen notable field recordists from all over the […]
“I recorded a single track, listening to the original, commenting on what I heard. After that, I didn’t listen to the original again, but built everything on top of the commentary (and looking at the waveform of the original. I tried voice-acting some of the atmosphere, added more comments (some of which were inspired by reviews of St Patrick’s Park found online) and thought a lot of early Frank Zappa montages while doing it. “
Following hot on the heels of our Hamburg-based album Erinnerungen an eine Stadt, we’re pleased to offer up the first in (hopefully) a series of free downloads highlighting the very best of Cities and Memory. It’s been quite a first year for us, with 60 contributors, sounds spread across 23 countries and more than 150,000 listens […]
As we mentioned a short while ago, a couple of artists picked out boat recordings despite not being especially fond of boats, to say the least. So why did La Cosa Preziosa pick out the sound of a tourist boat trip? Here she explains eloquently: “I am not a huge fan of boats, of any […]
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"As this wave from memories flows in, the city soaks it up like a sponge and expands. A description of [the city] as it is today should contain all [the city's] past. The city, however, does not tell its past, but contains it like the lines of a hand, written in the corners of the streets, the gratings of the windows, the banisters of the steps, the antennae of the lightning rods, the poles of the bags, every segment marked in turn with scratches, indentations, scrolls."
- Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities
Grand Prix winner and Coup de Coeur winner, Académie Charles Cros
