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Article Culture Feature

Field Recordings: a Beginners Guide

This article is hopefully the first in a series on the subject of field recording. If your goal is relaxation, focus, or just an aesthetic appreciation of sonic texture, this article is an introduction to the best places on the internet to go to hear, and find out about field recording.

Phonography, otherwise known as field recording, is the recording of natural or man-made sounds in-situ and away from the recording studio. But does it produce art or music? In modern music, the line between music and sound has become blurred. Sound and noise play a part in electronic composition that is as important as tone and scale. Today to ask if something is music or noise seems like an out-of-date question.

Like photography is the capturing of light to produce an image, phonography is the capturing of sound to produce a recording. Unlike ‘art’ or ‘music’, which have normative aspects, the words ‘phonography’ and ‘photography’ are matter-of-fact descriptions of a technical act. A bad photo may or may not be art, but nobody says a bad photo is not a photo.

Radio Aporee

The Radio Aporee project is “a global soundmap dedicated to field recording, phonography and the art of listening”. Field recordings from all over the world are placed on a 3D Google map, along with information about the recordings and recordists. You can explore the world while exploring the variety of sonic textures and landscapes that field recording can offer. New updates are added by its active user base every day.

Categories
Art Article Experimental Synth

New Label: Eastern Ears

Twinkle3 – I Rode A Tiger But Dared Not Dismount (2/4/21)

Great to see local sound experimentalists and noise enthusiasts, Eastern Ear (formally NNSAC), have started releasing recordings of music performed at their events.

Their first release by Twinkle3, consisting of Clive Bell (shakuhachi and other woodwind), David Ross (drosscillator and percussion) and Richard Scott (electronics and analogue synthesiser), was a very memorable gig. So it’s great to hear the sounds again, in clean digital form (especially that wonderfully blooping and burbling EMS Synthi).

A mesmerising blend of futuristic alien rhythms, electro-acoustic interludes and 1950’s synthesis.

Twinkle3

Eastern Ear are based in Norwich and organise regular workshops, performances/events, along with the excellent Yarmonics sonic arts festival in Great Yarmouth.

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Ambient Article Experimental House Synth Techno

Bandcamp Friday Roundup

In case you’ve been living under a virtual rock, ‘Bandcamp Friday’ is where the website waives their commision fees for a day each month.

On one hand, this results in every artist with an instagram account shouting further into the void. But on the other, labels and artists are now planning their release schedule around this day, to capitalise on releasing and pre-releasing new music. So it is certainly worth a dig!

Here’s our top picks from yesterdays busy, yet fruitful Bandcamp Friday (2nd April 2021).

Polypores – Shpongos

Black Girl / White Girl – Hyper Reality

Benge – Syndrones and Syntones

Apologist – Air Foundry

Ben Pest – On The Three

Dexorcist – Body Clock EP

Categories
Aesthetics Article Culture Politics

Music and Rebellion

Arnold Schoenberg – Six Little Piano Pieces

Can popular music be subversive? According to the critical theorist Theodore Adorno the answer is firmly, ‘no’. The reasons for this are related to the structure of contemporary society itself; “We live in a society of commodities—that is, a society in which production of goods is taking place, not primarily to satisfy human wants and needs, but for profit. Human needs are satisfied only incidentally, as it were. This basic condition of production affects the form of the product as well as the human interrelationships.” A Social Critique of Radio Music – Adorno