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TRANSMISSIONS | HONG KONG

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This week’s transmission is an excerpt from our archive of field recordings done in Hong Kong in 2008. Though recent, many sounds captured in these few minutes reflect a Hong Kong of the past: due to development, the sound landscape of the city has changed drastically within the past few years, as Chinese institutions like the open-air food markets, or dai pai dong, disappear from the streets. This clip echoes the sounds of a Hong Kong that can no longer be accessed.

We hope you enjoy this third installment of transmissions.

TRANSMISSIONS | DEATH MUST DIE

Death Must Die

This week’s transmission is an extract from Death Must Die, which, like La Brulure, is one in a series of limited-edition Soundwalk releases with custom-designed letterpress packaging.

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“Death Must Die is a sound piece that begins before the rising of the sun and reproduces the cycle of a day in Varanasi… Benares, Kashi; a sacred city, where death is everywhere, bathed in light. It is here that the Hindus come to die and burn their dead. It is here, on the river’s edges, that the wrath and the grace of Shiva are expressed.

The sound intoxicating as death itself, it is a hammering song of the dead, playing until one is transfixed. It’s the murmuring of the Ganges… the power of silence.

[Death Must Die] revisits the cycles between life and death, using sound as a metaphor: the laughter of children playing, dogs barking – it contrasts the extreme accumulation of bells, the infernal trance of religious songs, the peculiar sound of bodies burning upon wood… the voice of a young nun coming from an ashram in the silence of the night.”

We hope you enjoy this second installment in the summer Transmissions series.

TRANSMISSIONS | LA BRULURE

La Brulure

In light of Soundwalk’s various site-specific projects in the works to be featured in China, Europe, and the United States, we’d like to send word of our travels in the form of weekly installments of sound recordings from the Soundwalk archives, made around the world by our sound artists over the past few years, and the accompanying photography.

We’ll begin with an excerpt from our new sound project, La Brulure, which evokes the heat of summer at its most basic and primal. La Brulure is the first in a series of limited-edition Soundwalk releases with custom-designed letterpress packaging.

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“In a solitary trek along the Mediterranean coasts from Spain to Greece, along the south of France, through Italy, Montenegro, and Albania… Stephan Crasneanscki of Soundwalk records the sulfurous fury of summer. It all begins with sound.

It is that of a cricket in the heart of summer, which, in the intoxication of a lovesong, perishes, sucked dry, burnt by the rays of the sun.

It is the memory of childhood under the sky of vacation, always denser and more blue. The memories of adolescence which burn our skin. Bodily desire, sensual pleasure, betrayal.

The encounters of one night, of one day, the fever of a summer without sleeping. When the spirit is consumed and the passion does not rest.

The trance of cicadas, the music and the songs collected in villages, which like ripples of heat in the air rise to the surface.”

We hope you enjoy the summer’s first installment of recordings from the archives.

24HOURS: STARCK’S PERSONAL SOUNDSCAPE

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24 Hours: The Starck Mix is a “bespoke” mix created as a gift for the designer Philippe Starck. The project, arranged, composed, and mixed by Soundwalk was over a year in the making. It is a unique mix of ambient sounds, music, and voices made available in the form of an iphone application in partnership with Wallpaper.

In an interview with French radio France Culture, Starck named 24 Hours: The Starck Mix as “the most beautiful gift [he] has ever received.”

Listen to an exclusive 20 minute clip from 24 Hours: The Starck Mix at 4pm.

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Soundwalk and Starck will present the performance show, LE SON DU NOUS, at MAC Créteil’s International Exit Festival, March 19th and 20th. The performance will provide a unique look at another side of the well known designer, as he shares with us his passion for sound.

To buy tickets, call 01 45 13 19 19 or click here to book on MAC Créteil’s site.

ULYSSES SYNDROME: PUGLIA ITALY

location: 41° 0′ 31″ N, 16° 30′ 46″ E

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photo by: Stephan Crasneanscki

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This is Soundwalks 4th excerpt of The Ulysses Syndrome, a sound journey following the route of Ulysses along the Mediterranean Sea.  We return 3000 years later. Without being seen, hundreds of millions of soundwaves are constantly flying over the surface of the water. Equipped with radio scanners, we have spent the last few months casting a 10 mile net from our boat into the sky, collecting sound fragments and bringing them back in. What you are now hearing are fragments of voices from what seems to be a scene unfolding along the coast line of Puglia at the Southeastern tip of Italy.

We hope you enjoy this poetic journey. Stay tuned…

murmer | Editions – Issue #2

Artist:        murmer
Title:         4 spaces  | ©
Date:        2009
Duration:  15′00

Editions_Issue#2_murmer
photo by: Patrick McGinley

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THE SOUND

During a recent tour of the northeastern United States I made a collection of recordings inside the spaces in which I would perform.  The individual recordings were to be used as the starting point of the performance in the same location, a slow sonic zooming-in to the self-same space shared with an audience, and an experiment in natural resonant feedback caused by playing the sound of a space back into itself.  A handful of the spaces were particularly interesting, and I collect those here to highlight the notion of no space being neutral, and of each having it’s own living, breathing character.  The spaces we hear here are St Stephen’s Church in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, the front lobby of the Baker Center for the Arts at Muhlenberg College, Allentown, Pennsylvania, and the gallery space at the Pyramid Atlantic in Washington DC.  At either end of this collection is a different kind of space, and one much closer to home: this is the sound of my mother’s backyard, on the edge of marshland in Abington, Massachusetts, with my personal favorite late-night sound of distant passing trains.

THE ARTIST

Patrick McGinley (aka murmer) is an American born sound, performance, and radio artist who has lived and worked in Europe since 1996.  In 2002 he co-founded framework, an organisation that produces a weekly radio show consecrated to field recording and phonography. His work concentrates on the framing of sounds from our environment which normally pass through our ears unnoticed and unremarked, but which out of context become unrecognisable, alien and extraordinary: crackling charcoal, a squeaking escalator, a buzzing insect, or one’s own breath. More recently McGinley has been giving presentations, workshops, and performances based on the exploration of site-specific sound and sound as definition of space.  In live performance his initial interest in field recording has developed into an attempt to integrate and resonate found sounds, found objects, specific spaces, and moments in time, in order to create a direct and visceral link with an audience and location.

Links: www.murmerings.com

ULYSSES SYNDROME: Sardegna \ Italy

location: 41º 21′7.46″ N, 9º 38′ 45.59″ E

Sardegna_Ulysses _Image
photo by: Stephan Crasneanscki

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The Ulysses Syndrome is a sound journey. Following the route of Ulysses along the Mediterranean Sea, we return 3000 years later. Without being seen, hundreds of millions of soundwaves are constantly flying over the surface of the water. Equipped with radio scanners, we have spent the last few months casting a 10 mile net from our boat into the sky, collecting sound fragments, bringing them back in. What you are now hearing is Sardinian leisure, spiritual quests and curiosities, and of course, fresh fish of the day, all radio frequencies popular and obscure, from submarines below, and airplanes above.

We hope you enjoy this poetic journey. Stay tuned…

ULYSSES SYNDROME: TUNISIA / NORTH AFRICA

location: 35º 23′ 20.58″N, 11º 57′ 11.25

ULYSSES SYNDROME
photo by: Stephan Crasneanscki

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The Ulysses Syndrome is a sound journey. Following the route of Ulysses along the Mediterranean Sea, we return 3000 years later. Without being seen, hundreds of millions of soundwaves are constantly flying over the surface of the water. Equipped with radio scanners, we have spent the last few months casting a 10 mile net from our boat into the sky, collecting sound fragments, bringing them back in. What you are now hearing is the fresh fish of the day,  Tunisian police along the coast, Sri Lankan cargo ships passing by, Libyan fisherman, all radio frequencies popular and obscure, from submarines below, and airplanes above.

We hope you enjoy this poetic journey. Stay tuned…

Francisco Lopez | Editions – Issue #1

Artist:         Francisco López
Title:           untitled #233 | ©
Date:          2008
Duration:   10′00

LOPEZ_COMBO

photo by: Francisco López

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THE SOUND

Original environmental sound matter recorded at Mamori Lake in the Brazilian Amazon in 2008.

My first visit to the Brazilian Amazon took place twenty years ago. Like the other rain-forests in the world I have had the opportunity to explore, the Amazon has been a constant source of fascination and inspiration. My approach to the work with field recordings is essentially phenomenological and spiritual, and thus I have very little interest in representation, against most current perspectives on phonographic art. Since 2005 I direct an annual residency / workshop for sound artists and composers at Mamori Lake in the Amazon. You can find complete information about this creative and vital experience through the link below. (edited and mastered at mobile messor, Amsterdam 2009)

THE ARTIST

Francisco López is internationally recognized as one of the major figures of the sound art and experimental music scene. Over the past 30 years he has developed an astonishing sonic universe, absolutely personal and iconoclastic, based on a profound listening of the world. Destroying boundaries between industrial sounds and wilderness sound environments, shifting with passion from the limits of perception to the most dreadful abyss of sonic power, proposing a blind, profound and transcendental listening, freed from the imperatives of knowledge and open to sensory and spiritual expansion. He has realized hundreds of concerts, projects with field recordings, workshops and sound installations in 60 countries of the five continents. His extensive catalog of sound pieces (with live and studio collaborations with over 100 international artists) has been released by more than 200 record labels worldwide, and he has been awarded three times with honorary mentions at the competition of Ars Electronica Festival. - Pedro Higueras, Sonom Studios

Links: http://www.franciscolopez.net | http://www.franciscolopez.net/amazon.html

BJ Nilsen | Editions – Issue #1

Artist:        BJ Nilsen
Title:         Are the birds gonna eat us, Mommy? | ©
Date:        2006-06-28
Duration:  7′18

BJ_TEST_BLOG
photo by: BJ Nilsen

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THE SOUND

This field recording was made at Vatnsleysuströnd, Landakot on the southwest coast of Iceland.

In this remote location I was drawn to the amazing birds nesting there, especially the Arctic Tern (Kría) who are fiercely protective of their nests and known for dive bombing towards any intruders, usually striking humans on the top or back of the head. The crow in the beginning of the recording lives in the house seen in the photograph, obviously he got upset by my furry microphone. Besides the birds we hear the rain, wind and ocean waves coming in from the North Atlantic.

THE ARTIST

Benny Jonas Nilsen was born in 1975. He has been active with experimental music for nearly 20 years. For the past 10 years he has been releasing albums on Touch, making music and sound design for documentary film and television.  He focuses on the sound of nature and its effect on humans, field recordings and the perception of time and space as experienced through sound, often electronically treated.

Links: www.bjnilsen.com | www.touchmusic.org.uk