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Why have we become so removed?

For this broadcast the artist behind A Sonorous Expedition; Ana Carolina Rodrigues, has invited Christopher Taylor to take us on a walk. Visiting a number of trees, times, places, and events he discusses our move away from using natural materials in their original state and asks; ‘why have we become so removed?’

A Sonorous Expedition presents a sound and visual, ecological and social research journey in Panama as a transformation to the environment of the Maxilla Space in London. In Panama, Ana Carolina was based in the indigenous community of Guna Yala, which encompasses rainforest and covers much of Panama’s eastern Caribbean coast; the aim was to learn from the indigenous community ecological and sustainable ways of living.

Each episode is presented in two halves: the original field recordings from the first half of each episode (A-sides), and the second half of each episode (B-sides) is a sonic response by invited artists, curated by artist and musician Jack Prest.

These responses take the form of deconstructed, remixed or re-recorded versions of the original field recordings and explore ambient electronic, contemporary classical, noise and other musical/sound forms conceptually connected to the practice of field recording.

CALL FOR CONTRIBUTORS: If you would like to contribute a field recording from an art institution to This Is Not A Love Song (Sound Archive), contact Joe and Chanelle at chanelle@chanellecollier.com

The artists would like to thank and acknowledge support from all contributing artists and arts workers who have offered recordings and advice.

The series is made in collaboration with Jack Prest.

A Side Field Notes:
“Episode 2 was recorded at the Foundation Louis Vuitton in Paris in August 2019, the boat-shaped institution with its surrounding pools providing respite from intense summer heat. We sat on an inordinately long white bench while observing that staff were required to stand. What is special about this recording is the slow reveal of the spatial characteristics throughout: from small, close, muffled sounds exploring the intimate surrounds; to crisp footfalls illuminating vertical hanging surfaces in middle distance; until finally a museum alarm chimes in concert with a high pitch child’s scream that touches the ceiling and very extremities of the interior space.” - Chanelle Collier

B Side Notes:
"On the recording process with a live ensemble: “a direct response in the studio wearing headphones with no previous listening” – Jack Prest

From The Archive:
(THE SOUND OF A MUSEUM)
Museums may have a homogeneous ambient sound because of the size of their exhibition halls. Each space is populated with a resounding, linguistically driven, ambient voice that is particular to the location’s culture and language. There is however, also a global audience at each cultural centre, an intercontinental melange of voices. Simultaneously, there is a transcontinental homogeneity and intercontinental melodies.

For whatever reason the squealing child’s voice is universal. It feels out the architecture of space with a projected volume that adults seldom perform. The unrestricted evocation of a child echoes from floor to ceiling and from wall to wall. Through this squeal one can feel the size and shape of the room in each recording. From everyone else, feet shuffle and clop, and undulating whispers approach, overlap, and retreat.

THE MUSEUM SPEAKS with its laser triggered alarms. When listening to the playback of these museum recordings it is interesting to try to distinguish the sounds made by the museum itself and the systems of the museum. Walkie-talkies bleep, and laser alarms siren off at various intervals, air-conditioners hum and clink in their efforts to control and condition the environment.

(RECORDING – SOFT DOCUMENTATION])
The microphone is a machine that hears. The natural reality of sound becomes codified, open to mechanical reproduction and dissemination as a multiple. The microphone differs from the human ear. In the microphone noise is treated evenly in relation to the receiver. Unlike the human ear, there is no prioritisation for listening. This democratised sound enters the microphone abstractly as conglomerate wave data. The background is brought forward because unlike the human ear a microphone is not discerning, not trying to ‘hear’ anything in particular. When the body listens, the brain edits out all that interference, focused as it is on grasping what is necessary to hear. The machine isn’t looking to communicate so it isn’t filtering signal from noise. - Joe Wilson.

This Is Not A Love Song [Radio] builds on an existing field recording project by artists Joe Wilson and Chanelle Collier titled This Is Not A Love Song (Sound Archive): 200 field recordings, 200 countries; a collection of the ambient sounds of major art institutions around the world, created through recordings from a global community of contributors. The project appropriates sound to critically study the ambience of institutional space.

This episode is a documentary about the importance of the "verb", which has a mysterious power because words create things.

The immensity of the orality is one of its fundamental attributes, at least this is the attitude that prevails in most African civilizations.

Radio Picnic is a mobile radio art project by zonoff which invites multi-disciplinary artists to create works inspired by the radio medium.

Encircled by trees we let our sonic roots delve into the topsoil and hear rustlings all around us. Combined binaural & stereo recording – works well with headphones.

Littoral Transmissions meander through the sonic landscape of the River Lea from Stonebridge Lock to Leamouth. Recordings from the field converge with layers of sound to create an aural impression of the navigation.

FUNKT offered 53 hours of electronic music and sound art from Cologne: computer music... self-invented instruments... DIY electronics... radio play... sound art... noise... data sonification... field recordings... radio art... sound studies... historical anchor points... niches... insider tips... different generations of Cologne's electronic + sound art landscape... join our music discovery journey... Full details, line-up and updates: https://www.gerngesehen.de/funkt

The FUNKT programme was developed under the project management of Georg Dietzler by Anke Eckardt, Claudia Robles-Angel, Dietmar Bonnen, Dirk Specht and Felix Knoblauch, in cooperation with Sarah Washington and Knut Aufermann. Thanks to sponsors Musikfonds e. V. with project funds from the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media as part of the special programme Neustart Kultur, Kunststiftung NRW (North Rhine-Westphalia Endowment for the Arts), the Cultural Office of the City of Cologne.

FUNKT was a festival of electronic music and sound art from Cologne, which took place on the 16th, 17th and 18th of April 2021.

From the moment you click ‘buy now’ to when your parcel arrives, what happens? Listening to the whispers from the fulfilment centre.

In a 2 hour broadcast, What Comes to Mind explore how logistics, supply chains and unseen labour intersect with our personal, intimate lives. The town of Tilbury, Essex acts as a central point of reference; home to the closest international port to London, the historic landing of the Empire Windrush, and the largest Amazon Fulfilment Centre in Europe. This piece includes original writings by Felix Bazalgette.

What Comes to Mind (WC2M) is a semi-regular broadcast project by Hannah Marine and Dani Smith. The project has been resident on Thamesmead-based community station RTM.fm since 2020, and has produced new commissions for Noods Radio and No Bounds.

It explores social history through sound collage, music, archive footage and original material. Equal parts thoughtful and chaotic, it’s referential in its form, sampling a wide range of material to explore the topic at hand.

Much of the spirit of WC2M is how different ideas drift in and out of focus and form connections with each other. It does not aim to be an authority on the given subject but rather a space to embrace a mood or feeling from within a social context.

Presented by Outlands, The Joyous Thing 3 is an annual gathering for the UK experimental music community and anyone with a curious ear. 2022's event featured an in person programme at MK Gallery, with newly commissioned works by Coby Sey, TACO!, ame, Lost Property, Eastern Ear, MK Gallery/Simon Wright, Tor Festival, Daniel W G Mackenzie, and Lukas Hornby; and live performances from emerging artists I Am Fya and Euso, plus DJ sets from Outlands members.

This episode features a guest mix by Koray Kantarcıoğlu.

Injazero Records founder Siné Buyuka plays a selection of electronic, experimental, ambient and contemporary classical tracks.

Tse Tse Fly Middle East was a nonprofit arts and activist organisation that existed from 2015 until 2023. Throughout that time, it presented a monthly two-hour radio programme showcasing sound art and experimental music from the Middle East, India and North Africa.

Communiques from Thanet Tape Centre, Hard drive sludge. audio tidal pools. Music sediment. Friends utterances, sea walls of noise, salt marsh drone.

Friends and relatives brush their histrionic shoulders on this month’s 77th indictment show. Props to ACA the new Tomás Tello project (with friends and family) recently released on Sucata Tapes. Limited tape goodness from an unique voice living out there, deep in the algarvian lagoons, doing his thing…

Also featuring Vica Pacheco beautiful Taciturno on Aquapelago compilation, People Like Us corroning it out with Ergo Phizmiz, (twice!) as well as hidden Polish 80’s gem in the form of Czeslaw Niemen, blink it and you’ll miss it.

Photo: Abandoned hotel in Malindi, Kenya 2017

Discrepancies is a global showcase of disparate music with a focus on earthly field recordings and international sounds, curated by the Discrepant record label, presented by Gonçalo F Cardoso.

Welcome to walkplacedistancetime.

Walking, movement in place, in air, distance through time.

Today’s episode is Kittiwake Triptych No. 1: Cullernose.

This is the second of a triptych of recordings of my walking to “the same place” – a Kittiwake colony – twenty minutes sitting at the place and my walking away back to my starting point. The three “same places” are one in rural Newfoundland and two in rural Northumberland. At each site, on another day, or at a different time of the same day, each recording would have been different.

embodiment -:- walking human movement -:- place more-less natural -:- distance time over across -:- field recording -:- poetry -:- composition -:- martin p eccles

In this episode, Shane Woolman plays Shit & Shine, Maral, Lady Lykez and more; and presents a guest mix by anrimeal, featuring Yves Tumor, Wayne Phoenix and others.

New music with The Wire Magazine.

This episode features music made by Naviar’s community inspired by Taylor Wray’s poem “first light / losing the thread / of a dream”.

To have your music featured on the show, participate in the Haiku music challenge.

Thirty minutes of experimental music made in response to a weekly haiku poem, curated by Marco Alessi of Naviar Records and Naviar's international community of composers.

On the 6th of October 2022, Tenement Press held an evening at Brick Lane Bookshop to mark and celebrate the publication of SJ Fowler's debut novella, MUEUM, with readings and contributions from Gareth Evans, Chris McCabe, Chloe Aridjis, Iain Sinclair, and SJ Fowler (in order of appearance).

See here for more information. Sound recorded by Milo Thesiger – Meacham.

SJ Fowler is a writer and poet living in London. His collections include Fights (Veer Books, 2011), The Rottweiler’s Guide to the Dog Owner (Eyewear Books, 2014), {Enthusiasm} (Test Centre, 2015), The Guide to Being Bear Aware (Shearsman Books, 2017), I will show you the life of the mind (on prescription drugs) (Dostoyevsky Wannabe, 2020) and *The Great Apes *(Broken Sleep Books, 2022).

Chris McCabe's work spans art-forms and genres including poetry, fiction, non-fiction, drama and visual art. His work has been shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Award and the Republic of Consciousness Prize. His latest poetry collection, The Triumph of Cancer (Penned in the Margins, 2018), is a Poetry Book Society Recommendation and he is the editor of several anthologies including Poems from the Edge of Extinction: An Anthology of Poetry in Endangered Languages (Chambers, 2019).

Chloe Aridjis is the author of three novels, Book of Clouds (Vintage, 2010), which won the Prix du Premier Roman Etranger in France, Asunder (Vintage, 2013), set in London’s National Gallery, and Sea Monsters (Vintage, 2020), which was awarded the 2020 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. Chloe has written for various art journals and was guest curator of the Leonora Carrington exhibition at Tate Liverpool.

Iain Sinclair is a Welsh writer and filmmaker. Much of his work is rooted in London. He also continues his engagement with small independent presses, publishing Fifty Catacomb Saints with Tangerine Press, 2022, and Fever Hammers with Face Press, 2021 (who are also due to release Mental Travaillers: or, The Battle of the Books; Blake & Latham in Subtle Congress on Peckham Rye).

A four-part, unabridged broadcast of SJ Fowler’s debut novella, MUEUM — as read by the author — recorded on location in Resonance Extra's South London studios. Produced by Dominic Jaeckle and Milo Thesiger-Meacham.

"With the apocalyptic vision of Ballard and the acerbic attitude of Céline, MUEUM scatters human detritus over the shiny Perspex of our most dearly loved vitrines." – Chris McCabe

"A showcase, ransacked with horrid delight: Fowler's MUEUM presents the placid, lurid violences of surveillance and exhibition with startling and brutal stylishness. A seething triumph." – Eley Williams

A novella of ludic menace, a puzzle without pieces, SJ Fowler’s MUEUM pictures the amassing and dismantling of a public edifice, brick by brick, in prose that refracts and breaks the light emitted by history’s ornaments and history’s omissions. Suspended in unknowable time there is a city; in the city, an event, a conflict. Amid the ash, fog and cloud, there is the manufacturing of a space—a many-winged museum on the make.

On the plinths, exquisite remnants of life present and past—adorning the walls, portraits of gentle torture sit hand in hand with brutal and statuesque portrayals of camaraderie—and the gift-shop is littered with plastic curios and gilt revulsion. Goya, as atmosphere rather than artwork, hovers amid iron age ghosts, bronzed ideas, and antiqued anxiety.

Pacing the hall, atrium and corridor, there are those who keep the museum—the various midwives to the building’s demands—and those, like the reader, who merely visit; those who pass through the vacant galleries adrift with questions. What can I touch? What is next to Egypt? What is hidden in Mesopotamia? Where do we eat? Drink? Where is the entrance? The exit? Following the tradition of the Nestbeschmutzer authors (“one who dirties their own nest,” vis-à-vis Bernhard and Gombrowicz, et al), in Fowler’s curt, spiralling, and acute work, the museum’s keepers will answer.

A four-part, unabridged broadcast of SJ Fowler’s debut novella, MUEUM — as read by the author — recorded on location in Resonance Extra's South London studios. Produced by Dominic Jaeckle and Milo Thesiger-Meacham.

This episode features tracks selected in response to postcards sent in by Luci Pina, Orlando Gaffney Hyde & Jacob Clayton. Featuring Laurie Anderson, Erik Satie, Elvis and recordings from the second iteration of our event at first sight live at the ICA on 21st October 2022.

The radio counterpart to live intermedia event series Late Works, hosted by founder Joseph Bradley Hill. Each week a new guest joins Joe in the studio to discuss and perform their work. Expect in-depth interviews, live performances, conversations and new event experiments.

This first episode features two pieces:

'Back to Back with Paolo' (2014)

An encounter between Davide and Paolo, two amateur singers who meet accidentally on the street at night time. After a short introduction, the encounter turns into a back to back chanting battle. The street becomes the stage for a spontaneous performance. The chants are a way to discover each other.

'Memories of a Pigeon Shooter' (2012)

An elderly man speaks about his former career as an amateur pigeon shooter. After talking about his prizes and victories, the meaning of his stories slowly comes to the surface: the desire to remain attached to his memories and not be forgotten. Playback Instruction: if the monologue exceeds your personal physical tolerance, leave the room where the recording is playing so that the shooter suddenly finds himself speaking alone, with nobody listening to him.

Davide Tidoni is an artist and researcher interested in the relational dimension of listening, and in the physical experience of sound. He works with live performance, intervention, audio recording, video, and guided listening. He recently published a sound ethnography on the ultras group BRESCIA 1911. 'Collected Recordings' is a series of works selected by Tidoni from his extensive back catalogue.

In this episode, Theo Sayers is joined by experimental singer-songwriter Michael Tequila, playing an eclectic selection of tracks from the likes of Suicide, Nick Cave and Elza Soares.

Follow Michael Tequila on Instagram.

Electronic musician Theo Sayers transports listeners with a mix of electronic, ambient, spiritual and new age music.

"Here is a mix I made last month. It is inspired by a stupid piano I found a few houses down and dragged home. Lately, I've been working on some new instruments, spawned from various marshlands around South East London, and this moss-covered electric piano was a funny addition.

So, I put together these mostly keyboard-oriented pieces; some are bits I played on the following days, some experiments with homemade robotics, but it features a few relics too, such as: Koray and Marc's remixes of some old music and one of my all time favourite rave tunes, Twisted Girl, with a hypnotic piano."

Musical sketches by ENGLAND'S COUNCIL OF LEGISLATION AND GOVERNING BODY OF HYPER REAL SIMULATIONS AND CONSTRUCTS is a monthly mix of curation, recompilation and pseudepigrapha.

In this episode, Sonic Darts celebrates the lo-fi; music & sound which prioritise ideas & sonic exploration over hi-fidelity production. Feat. tape manipulations, subterranean field recordings, a lost Cornish folk song, 1 bit dance and more

Gwaith Swn's Sonic Darts is a London-based sound art collective presenting new sound works, performances and discussions.

In this episode, Mitamine Lab presents a mixtape by Mabui Music: a group of passionate musicians from Berlin who are constantly looking for perfect sound to express their emotions to make surrounding spaces and places more colourful and optimistic.

Mabui Music has cooked a limited edition classic mixtape that will be distributed to friends & followers after this radio release. Feel free to contact and follow them! Also please listen to the complete version of the mixtape on Mitamine's soundcloud or website.

Mitamine Lab is a culture laboratory based in Mexico City which blends sound archives with contemporary music and literature.

Patrick and his guests walk from Exchange Square behind Liverpool Street Station – where Austerlitz first arrives to London on the Kindertransport – to Brick Lane where Stephen reads a poem dedicated to Altab Ali and Bill Fishman. From there they continue to Alderney Road – where Austerlitz lives in the novel and also home to the oldest Ashkenazi Jewish cemetery in the UK – and finally arrive at Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park behind St. Clement's Hospital where Sebald's character spends a long period of recovery.

Sound recorded by Milo Thesiger-Meacham and photography by Karen Lacey-Holder. Thanks to Leonard Shear of the United Synagogue.

In this extended programme Patrick Bernard follows in the footsteps of W. G. Sebald and his eponymous character Austerlitz as he explores the East End of London with poet Stephen Watts (a friend of 'Max' Sebald who accompanied him on many of his walks). They are joined by Nadia Valman and David Anderson from Queen Mary University of London as they visit many of the locations in the novel to uncover the layers of history hidden beneath the surface of the city and Sebald's text.