Those who know me know that I am extremely prone to obsessions that seem sudden in their onset. Sometimes these can be short-lived, and sometimes long. They seem to permeate and intertwine with some other obsessions and interests though, and I think that this is one of the things that makes people creative. I know that I am not unique in this, but I don’t know why some people seem to see it as strange or certainly not normal behaviour.
Recently I have been getting into field recordings. I have always kind of done this on and off. I studied film at university and while I had illusions of writing scripts for cinema, the programme focused on documentary video because of staff expertise and connections. Everybody wanted to be directors and producers or camera operators. I wanted to be a director and camera operator, even. I had no objections to being the sound recordist, though. One of the most interesting parts of the process was recording wild tracks of the environmental ambience that could be used to cover incidental noises and thus not need to reshoot. In my band in my early twenties, when recording our demo at a studio in Sunderland I got the studio owner/engineer/producer Paul to record street noise. I have often recorded sounds on my phone the way that some people take photographs of absolutely everything.
However, I am hearing more and more cool stuff. Bandcamp is full of it, and though you might need to search and stuff, browsing and clicking links is so good. I ended up doing this and getting to were some sound days, one separately be placed by Zhao Cong / Zhu Wenbo.
I know a lot of people might say ‘It’s just people recording random things. Anyone can do that’. I would say, yes. But most people don’t, and they don’t consider how these sounds might mix, combine, document, etc. This led me down a rabbithole and I was encouraged by Rusty, a friend on Mastodon, to investigate Yan Jun, which led me to imagined commonities by fen, of which Yan Jun is a member.
This is a bit more ‘music’ than the previous, but still in love with sound creation and design and to be honest, I had to really restrain my self from just spending stupid amounts of money on Bandcamp recently because there are just so many great artists on there. If you have an itch to scratch, sonically speaking, you can find something there.
I’ve also wanted something that is a bit like harder than ambient but still ambient and not really drone music. That led me to ANTENNA by Sappow/Montahes. I love ‘LIVE03’, ‘LIVE01’ and ‘LIVE05’ in particular.
I also got the notification that Sappow has a new album out but I am deliberately not listening to it yet because what if I just keep spending money that I shouldn’t be spending?
It hasn’t all been Bandcamp purchases, though. I bought quite a few used CDs of stuff from my youth that I owned before or coveted but had sold prior to travelling to the US/Japan. These were: The Prodigy’s Music for the Jilted Generation, which has some great stuff on there but isn’t quite as good as I had remembered (but absolutely necessary for ‘No Good (Start The Dance)’ and ‘One Love’); Let No One Live Rent Free in Your Head by Nicolette, which is still great, especially ‘We Never Know’; The Black Dog’s Music for Adverts (and Short Films), which is good, and gets fantastic nearer to the end; Hold On by super_collider, which I always wanted, and it’s OK but I suspect this is more of a grower and so I am going to spend more time with it; and The Orb’s Adventures Beyond The Ultraworld, because I needed it for ‘Little Fluffy Clouds’ and ‘Earth (Gaia)’ and ‘Star 6 & 7 8 9’ is better than I remembered it being from sitting in a friend’s bedroom in darkness aged fifteen.
I have been making more tape loops, got an interesting synth thing, sold some effect pedals to finance my Bandcamp habit, and been making field recordings on a tape recorder and have bought some more equipment. I have an EP to be released in May on Bandcamp that features some more sound manipulation than on my album Debt Medal. I will be doing a video of me jamming to a tape loop I made some time in the next week or two when I have time.
Till then, cheerio! X
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