It’s the dead of night in the village of Vanv Vieng, Laos, but there’s still plenty happening in this field recording by Mark Wilden. Crickets chirp, cockerels around the village are crowing, indicating that perhaps we’re coming up towards dawn, and every so often a vehicle rolls in and out of earshot, disrupting the peace. […]
With President Trump very much in the global spotlight for all the wrong reasons once again, it feels like a good time to highlight another one of our Trump protests – and one in which the threat of violence looms loud and clear. Tim Kahn recorded this on November 10, 2016 after Donald Trump was elected […]
Chattering birdsong today from Beihai Park in Beijing, China, as recorded by Mark Wilden. The sound has been given a rather special treatment by Oxford-based artist Richard Watts, who writes: “The inspiration for this piece came from a work by Persian poet Farid ud-Din Attar called ‘The conference of the birds’. “I used samples of […]
Zima, Russia – today we’re on the platform of a Siberian train station, listening to the hissing of train brakes, the cries of passing train horns and the distant Russian departure announcements, as recorded by Mark Wilden. Oxford-based musician Richard Watts recomposed this recording, adding relentless rhythm and a cold, granular synthesis to create something from […]
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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
