Put it in your ears

Last month I linked to some new-to-me music, this month I'm sharing some interesting audio pieces - documentaries, podcasts, projects, field recordings and so on.

"Lake Wanaka New Zealand tree sunset mountains" by Evgeny Pashkevich

I'm pretty obsessed with audio, and the rise of podcasting/sound hosting has been terrific for finding new and exciting stuff to listen to. But there are also a lot of unedited conversations (e.g. hours of boring rambling), unmixed audio (e.g. wild variations in volume, poor balance and EQ), poorly considered projects (e.g. producers who have a great idea but soon find it is only one idea and abandon podcasting after a couple of episodes) and samey content (e.g. Skype/Facetime interviews). I can completely understand why folks might choose to stick to a handful of reliable, relatively mainstream podcasts instead of venturing out and sifting through huge piles of stuff to find other things they like.

But there is so much to listen to! Art projects, sound walks, field recordings, essays, abstract music, installations, weird and indefinable things . . .  So here are a few bits just to get you started, things I've listened to and enjoyed over the last month or two, mainstream and slightly more obscure. When I've recommended a larger project, I've tried to include links to specific pieces or episodes, because I know that it can be a bit overwhelming otherwise.

I hope you find something enjoyable to listen to here (I'd recommend headphones for most of the pieces) - and please feel free to send me links to things you've listened to and loved of late!

Short Cuts

Short Cuts is one of my favourite places for hearing interesting, short audio pieces on a regular basis. The format is usually an introduction to the episode’s theme from presenter Josie Long, three diverse pieces with brief links, then an outro. But within that structure, you might hear anything! Two episodes (of many) that I’ve loved are Deep Time (“A solar eclipse repeats over and over, a musical key unlocks lost memories and a life marked out in books”) and Sports (“From rally car driving to the healing power of climbing”). Find more great stuff from the production team at Falling Tree on their SoundCloud.

Taman Tugu: Interference/Resistance

While I won’t be in Kuala Lumpur any time soon, I was intrigued to hear about this site-specific soundscape work. Yonatan Collier recorded areas of this re-greened ex-suburb jungle park, then manipulated those field recordings in various ways and mapped them out in an app, which plays the altered sounds back to listeners as they move around the site. Watch the video below.

My Life in Music: John Tavener’s The Lamb

A beautiful audio essay from Kitty Macfarlane and producer Rosie Boulton. It moves from the music of John Tavener's "The Lamb" to the Steart Marshes nature reserve, from the poem by William Blake to birds, from the making of landscapes/places by nature/people to ethical musings: everything combining in memory and running as tidal streams into other places and pieces.

Cities and Memory

A long-running online audio project and map - people submit field recordings of places and they or others also create remixed or reimagined pieces taking those field recordings as the starting point. Sometimes these are subtle and ambient remixes, sometimes they use only the content and chop it up to create beats, tunes and textures, sometimes they add entire bands and other sounds to respond to the initial recording. One place to start with the remixes is the Sounds of the Year albums (e.g. Sounds of the Year 2019). But I prefer to listen to both the field recording and the reimagined sound, so if I hear something interesting on one of those albums (e.g. Church Bells were the Internet of the 1500s (Hanoi, Vietnam)), I’ll go and find them on the website (e.g. Church bells were the internet of the 1500s).

Within the Wires

I can recommend the first season of Within the Wires - it’s the only season I’ve listened to! This is a story told via a series of relaxation cassettes - as you listen, it becomes apparent that the person listening to the tapes is imprisoned in an institution and the person producing the tapes is trying to help them escape. This is one of those ones where you do need to start at the start and listen through, as it's a serial narrative.

I Am Still Breathing

One of my favourite pieces in the most recent issue of Queer Out Here was Allysse Riordan’s piece I Am Still Breathing. Allysse created this rich piece entirely from sounds found on the free music archive, which shows you don’t always have to be a field recordist or musician to create interesting soundscapes and stories.

Soundmarks

I spent a very enjoyable few hours the other weekend listening to all of the pieces on the Sounding Aldborough / Soundmarks Soundcloud. This is a fascinating archaeology/art project, based around a dig in the Yorkshire village of Aldborough. The pieces include a series of episodes during the dig with interviews with historians and volunteers, a series of site-specific compositions created by Rob St John based on field recordings taken around the area, and a documentary about the entire process. If you only want to listen to one thing, it's probably best to go with the Soundmarks doco.

Off Track

My love of this programme is pretty well documented by now! It’s such a great show, presented by the excellent and enthusiastic Dr Ann Jones. One of my favourite things from Off Track is the podcast-only series Earworms from Planet Earth - crammed full of listener-contributed field recordings, with occasional comments from experts identifying what we can hear (it’s a frog).

Have You Heard George's Podcast?

Maybe I’m a bit late to the party on this one. I haven’t listened to all the episodes yet, but I’m really into these audio stories from George the Poet, spoken mostly in rhyme, with blends of music, soundscapes, acted scenes. One early episode that I loved was A Grenfell Story - it both is and isn’t what you might expect.

Oceanian PhoNographic Mornings

This is a gorgeous album of field recording-based audio curated by Stéphane Marin/Each Morning of the World. From the wall of cicada noise pre-storm to the chiiiw-dikka-dikka-dikka-dikka of a pedestrian crossing, from Australian frog choruses to markets in Port Moresby and a band in Vanauatu. Start from the start, or if you just want one track, try out the chatty currawongs and faint musical drone of Morning Caucus or the butcherbirds in Byron Bay Hinterland (because I like birds). I found this via A Closer Listen - keep them on your feeds for more great suggestions.

Audio Playground

Bonus round - Audio Playground is a chance to make your own audio and listen to short responses to weekly prompts. Sarah Geis has set this up, and I'm loving it so far! Listen to responses so far (including mine!) here. Why not join in?

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So, which bits did you enjoy most? What else have you been listening to lately? Let me know!

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