push play urbanism

pushplayurbanism is a database of manipulated/mixed/processed/composed/raw urban field recordings (2000-present) stemming from my current Berlin-based research investigating the increasingly critical role of sound in cities. please send comments/suggestions to klangstadt (at) gmx (dot) de var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-17174096-2']); _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']); (function() { var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true; ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); })();

[pushplayurbanism-blog]

[pushplayurbanism-blog]

Title / Wir Bauen Eine Neue Stadt (We are Building a New City) Artist / Greie Gut Fraktion (aka Antye Greie-Fuchs and Gudrun Gut), Alva Noto (aka Carsten Nicolai), Wolfgang Voigt Release / 2010 Label / Monika Enterprise Format / 12” Vinyl Profession / Producer, Musician, Vocalist, DJ, Label Director Sound City / Berlin Country / DE Type / Construction, Redevelopment A1 Wir Bauen Eine Neue Stadt - Alva Noto Remodel (Alva Noto aka Carsten Nicolai) [8:52] A2 Wir Bauen Eine Neue Stadt - Short Cut  (Mix: Antye Greie, Producer: Antye Greie, Gudrun Gut) [3:36] B1 Wir Bauen Eine Neue Stadt - Wolfgang Voigt Freiland Klaviermix 1 (Wolfgang Voigt) [5:41] B2 Wir Bauen Eine Neue Stadt - Wolfgang Voigt Freiland Klaviermix 2 (Wolfgang Voigt) [5:38] Greie Gut Fraktion is a collaboration of Antye Greie-Fuchs and Gudrun Gut. Greie is a producer, electronic musician and vocalist formerly based in Berlin and currently in Hailuoto Finland.  Gut, described as a “legend” of the West Berlin underground scene, founded a pioneering German industrial band, Einstürzende Neubauten, in the 1980s and now runs the label Monika Enterprises.  Their earlier release—Baustelle—is a mix of field recordings from construction sites—you can hear saws, pneumatic jackhammers, drills and pumps.  This release is a remix version featuring Berlin-based electronic musician and artist Alva Noto (aka Carsten Nicolai) and Cologne-based electronic music artist Wolfgang Voigt.

discogs/Listen, Watch (Alva Noto)

[pushplayurbanism-blog]

Photo Courtesy of Noorient

Title / The Round trip Artist / Mahmoud Refat (b. 1974) Release / 2003 Format / Installation Label / Self-Release Profession / Sound Artist, Musician, Producer, Label Director Sound City / Cairo Country / EG The Round Trip (2003) is a sound installation based on that unites audio together with visual elements based on a map of the city.  Refat runs the Cairo-based record label 100Copies, which acts as a platform to support the local experimental music scene and organizes an electronic music festival. 

Discogs, Lastfm

[pushplayurbanism-blog]

Title / Lagos Soundscape Artist / Emeka Ogboh Release / 2010 Format / mp3, Installation Label / Self-Release Profession / Sound Artist Sound City / Lagos Country / NI Type / Traffic, Bus, Hawker, Horn, Voice By 2015, it’s expected that Lagos will gain 67 new residents with each passing hour. Densely packed with residential and commercial infrastructure, less than 3% of the city is considered “open” and an overwhelming 70% of the African urban population resides in squatters or slums, according to a 2004 UN-HABITAT survey. Insufficient transportation infrastructure and overcrowded public transport systems are principal sources of the Lagos’ soundscape. These sounds, synonymously linked to the city, are  explored by Ogboh as a means of depicting the vibrant, rich character of the incessant audio flow. He explains: “Aspects of Lagos affecting the overall atmosphere of the project would be the bus parks and the popular mass transit mini buses. The bus parks are the main transiting points for a large number of Lagosians that navigate the city with buses, and so a melting pot of diverse sounds. At the bus parks you will hear the bus conductors calling out their destinations and routes. These route announcements are the ‘verbal maps’; which are the acoustic cartographic mapping of Lagos by bus routes, and by the bus conductors. Lagos’ soundscape without the verbal maps could sound like some other place in the world. The verbal map is the proof of authenticity.”

Listen

[pushplayurbanism-blog]

Title / Lack Affix Artist / Nicholas Szczepanik, Juan José Calarco Release / 2010 Format / CD Label / Unfathomless Profession / Sound Artist Sound City / Buenos Aires, Washington DC Country / AR, USA Type / Traffic, Nighttime, Metro, Drone

Lack Affix is a collaboration between Washington D.C.-based Szczepanik and Buenos Aires-based Calarco. Despite the considerable population deviation (approximately 2.5 million) sounds from these capitals combine to merge in a dynamic composition. Calarco explains: "Since a couple of years I’ve been living in different areas very far from the centre of the city and for Lack Affix I tried to capture this particular feeling I used to get during the nights by the time I lived at the most overcrowded districts; those extremely distant-blurred sounds of night activities as trucks delivering boxes, police helicopters, construction sites working on full hours, gas stations filled with taxis coming and going but mostly that undefinable, abyssal texture of a huge city at very late hours. As Nicholas was sending me his re-works on my raw stuff and his own recordings for me to work on, we went more into this direction. So, I focused even more on recordings from the same streets and specially from terraces and inside subway entrances to reconstruct the sounds as I used to hear them those times ago; hopefully, even to recover some peaceful sensation I’ve never felt again so far, no idea if related with the dulling sound of those crowded districts or not."

Discogs

[pushplayurbanism-blog]

Photo courtesy of SEM label

Title / Nocturnal Urban Soundscapes Artist / Manrico Montero Release / 2010 Format / Video Label / Self-Release Profession / Sound Artist Sound City / La Paz Country / BO Type / Nighttime, Drone, Traffic

Ciudad Dormida by Mexican sound artist Montero aims to underline the distinct nature of La Paz’s (Bolivia’s administrative capital and the nation’s most populated region together with El Alto and Viacha) nocturnal soundscape. Presented alongside visual documentation, his previous piece on Mexico City featured a mechanic dronescape generated by traffic, devoid of human interaction or the bustling street markets characterizing the city’s daytime soundscape. He explains: "Ciudad Dormida" is a nocturnal urban soundscape project focused on exploring the nocturnal silent life of the urban spaces, playing with the idea of the sound fantasmagories and the memory of the acoustic spaces… Through intense recording sessions and monitoring of selected acoustic spaces of the historical downtown: alleys, streets, ancient churches, and plazas, a collection of over 250 micro sound pieces, 1 minute length each, were dedicated to the nocturnal experience of urban acoustic spaces.”

[pushplayurbanism-blog]

Title / Baustelle (Construction Site) Artist / Greie Gut Fraktion (aka Antye Greie-Fuchs and Gudrun Gut) Release / 2010 Label / Monika Enterprise Format / CD Profession / Producer, Musician, Vocalist, DJ, Label Director Sound City / Berlin Country / DE Type / Construction, Redevelopment

1 Cutting Trees [4:39] 2 Wir Bauen Eine Neue Stadt (We are Building a New City) [6:31] 3 Drilling An Ocean [4:03] 4 Mischmachine (Mixing Machine) [5:15] 5 Make It Work [3:37] 6 Betongiessen (Pouring Concrete) [3:55] 7 Grossgrundbesitzer (Large-scale landowner) [5:47] 8 Baustein (Building Block) [3:45] 9 China Memories [4:42] 10 White Oak [4:25] 11 We Matter [3:29] Greie Gut Fraktion is a collaboration of Antye Greie-Fuchs and Gudrun Gut. Greie is a producer, electronic musician and vocalist formerly based in Berlin and now in Hailuoto Finland.  Gut, described as a legend of the West Berlin underground scene, founded a pioneering German industrial band, Einstürzende Neubauten, in the 1980s and now runs the label Monika Enterprises.  This release is a reconstruction of field recordings from construction sites-saws, pneumatic jackhammers, drills and pumps are audible throughout the tracks.  Explaining the process in an interview, they state, “We derived many things  from our field recordings.  Sometimes we began with beats and sometimes with construction recordings.  For example “The Mixing Machine”: Gudeun recorded a mixer and said: Look Antye, that sounds exactly in sync with a really interesting beat.  Then we tinkered around to create a beat out of it and elaborated just a little more on top.” (Wir haben viele Sachen von unseren aufgenommenen Fieldrecordings abgeleitet. Manchmal haben wir mit Beats angefangen, und manchmal mit Bauaufnahmen. Zum Beispiel die „Mischmaschine“: Da hat Gudrun so einen Mischer aufgenommen und hat gesagt: Guck mal Antye, das klingt doch nach einem ganz interessanten Beat. Da haben wir dann einen Beat daraus gebastelt und da so ein bisschen mehr drauf gebaut.)  A remix release from an impressive group of artists (Alva Noto, Wolfgang Voigt and Antye Greie solo) were later released on a vinyl 12” entitled Wir Bauen Eine Neue Stadt (We are Building a New City).

Watch, Discogs

[pushplayurbanism-blog]

Title / Temporacha Artist / Tenniscoats (aka Saya and Takashi Ueno) Release / 2009 Label / Room40 Format / CD Profession / Musician Sound City / Tokyo Country / JP Type / Traffic, Park

1 Ichinichi [2:54] 2 Ninichime [4:06] 3 End Of The Day - Slight Hunger [4:21] 4 Timeless [5:43] 5 Do [1:40] 6 Sitting By [3:28] 7 Hajimari / Owari - Dream Is Refreshing [3:11]

Tenniscoats are usually classified as avant-garde, folk, psychedelic and indie.  This release features traditional instruments (accordion, guitar, keyboard, etc.) but less than ordinary are their recording sessions.  For this album they collaborated with Room40 label-founder Lawrence English, incorporating his field recordings into the compositions and recording in parks, such as Wakojurin, Koma-Gawa river, along roadways and within tunnels throughout Tokyo.  The second track, Ninichime, begins with traffic completely drowning out the sound of their instruments.    

Discogs/Listen, Watch

[pushplayurbanism-blog]

Title / HUM Artist / Sawako Kato (aka Sawako) Release / 2005 Label / 12k Format / CD Profession / Sound Artist Sound City / Tokyo, NYC Country / JP, USA 1 Pink Liquid Cotton Candy [5:56] 2 Patchworked Blanket [2:55] 3 Rush [4:18] 5 Way Home From School [3:46] 6 White Sky Winter Chicada [8:05] 7 Cloud No Crowd [13:02]

“Organic electronica” (organic atmosphere with future science) is how Sawako describes her work. Field recordings, piano, vocals, and additional instruments are featured together with performances by other musicians-Aoki Hayato (guitar + pianica), and 12k’s Kenneth Kirschner (room tones), and Taylor Deupree (kyma).  The label explains, “It’s as if she is not just searching for music in non-musical places but playing hide-and-seek with the most beautiful and sublime sounds around her and forming them by hand into a dreamy work of art.”  Familiar sounds of urban environment overlaid with meditative melodies and vocals. In a recent interview with Blow Up Magazine (Italy) she explains her process “I’m interested in the shift in modes of hearing from the “music” mode to the “sound event” mode - and the conscious mode and the subconscious mode. I want to make the sound environment, which is completed with your actual everyday sound environment. I want to make the sounding pool where your ears focus on different sounds every time you listen, where you realize and experience the different sounding existence every time you listen. With the drone or “non-musical” sound, I feel it is easier to create such types of sound environment.”

Preview

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Photo Courtesy Alberto Escoto

Title / Diario Sonoro Artist / Hernani Villaseñor Label / Self-Release Release / 2010 Format / mp3 Profession / Sound Artist, Composer Sound City / Mexico City, Morelia Country / MX Diario Sonoro [7:08] Mexican composer Villaseñor created this work using field recordings from Mexico City and Morelia in central Mexico during 2008.  During the sound gathering process, each sound was recorded alongside a site and date in a logbook, hence the title “Sound Diary.”  The resulting pieces, both raw and processed, depict a range of atmospheres.  The artist explains, “It simply opens up small windows of sound mixed in such a way that they offer a structure in which the piece is moving from one atmosphere to another.” 

[pushplayurbanism-blog]

Title / On the Moods of Sound over the Bosphorus Strait, Istanbul, Turkey Artist / Ursula Nistrup Label / Self-Release Release / 2010 Format / mp3, installation Profession / Musician, New Media Artist, Installation Artist

Sound City / Istanbul Country / TR Type / Traffic, Horn, Ship 1 On the Moods of Sound over the Bosphorus Strait, Istanbul, Turkey [6:14] Danish artist Nistrup composed On the Moods of Sound over the Bosphorus Strait, Istanbul, Turkey by approaching an everyday occurrence as if it were a concert.  The work is included in her series On the Moods of Sound, for which a series of printed cards have been paired with soundtracks.  For this particular track, Nistrup writes: “I became interested in the kind of tonality that horns from ships generate, it reminded me of the sounds at a concert hall generated in the orchestra pit, where professional music exerts confusing sounds through the tuning of instruments before a performance.  On can listen, that this un-orchestrated set of sounds creates another type of performance value, as it gives a sound experience to an audience at a conscious or unconscious level.” 

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Title / Sounds Building In The Fading Light Artist / Stephen Vitiello (b. 1964) Label / Creamgarden Release / 2001 Format / 10” Vinyl Profession / Musician, New Media Artist, Sound Artist

Sound City / NYC Country / USA Type / Aircraft, Wind 1 A Single Mix [7:36] 2 B Dense Mix [6:45] American musician Vitiello occupied the 91st floor of the World Trade Center in 1999 as part of an artist's residency.  Over a period of five months, he gathered sounds from contact microphones placed on the windows and routed into a mixing board, which were then processed by equalization and a Sherman Filter Bank (a Belgian analog filtering and distortion unit).  As a result, the sound of passing aircrafts, street crowds and wind are captured as they pass through the building’s envelope.  Winds After Hurricane Floyd, perhaps his most famous composition, was recorded as soon as he was permitted to enter the WTC following a temporary closure due to high winds.  He explains, “Really my goal was to bring sound that was outside the building inside… I put the microphones back up and you could hear the building creaking and cracking like an old wooden shed.  Sometimes it’s a way in to understand what it is that I do.  What I say: I listen, I record spaces, I listen to buildings—it doesn’t click and then I play that piece and people go "Ah, that’s something that I never could have heard without you.”

Discogs

[pushplayurbanism-blog]

Title / Les Voûtes Artist / Michael Gendreau Label / Cohort Release / 2008 Format / CD, Live Profession / Scientist, Acoustician, Physicist, Musician, Sound Artist Sound City / Paris Country / FR Type / Vibration, Traffic 1 Voûtes [23:08] 2 Voûtes (Live) [24:37] “I was first a musician… later came physics.  So, I never got this out of my blood of course… You can’t help hearing both ways… It’s beneficial because I can distinguish some kinds of effects that maybe a physicist wouldn’t notice”

For Gendreau, the vibrations of a performance structure are equally important as the sound itself.  The California-based scientist/artist sheds a unique perspective on Parisian traffic in Les Voûtes by recording the resultant vibrations underground, specifically a series of arches running beneath rue Tolbiac.  Using seismic accelerometers, vibrations were then amplified until they could be perceived audibly.  The time of day (i.e. rush hour) during which vibrations are collected heavily influences the recordings, so Gendreau made recordings at various times and sites within the structure.  The material was then combined with a live feed from stereo vibrations during an underground performance.  California-based Gendreau often records the infrasonic vibrations of performances spaces and uses the structure’s resonances as an additional instrument during site-specific performances.

Live @ Lausanne

[pushplayurbanism-blog]

Title / Habitus Artist / Cédric Maridet Label / White Noise Records Release / 2006 Format / CD, Live Profession / Sound Artist, Musician, Composer Sound City / Hong Kong Country / CN Type / Traffic, Aircraft, Highway, Metro, Bus 1 habitus [30:00] Habitus is a 30-minute-long composition by Hong Kong-based Cédric Maridet and named after the gallery from which it was recorded.  For the live performance, two microphones were installed at the gallery in order to record sound from nearby highways, tramways, Victoria Harbour and a nearby heliport.  Simultaneously, Maridet used software to transform the sounds real-time.  “The general structure of the piece is marked by a slow evolution from non-processed to abstract sounds, to end with those of the real environment… the different sound events from the original soundscape, like cars, trams and buses passing by, slowly loose their indexical references through transformations, and become material for the creation of different sound objects, which evolves through variations introduced by the composer.”

Listen

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Title / Huangpu Artist / Cédric Maridet Label / White Noise Records Release / 2005 Format / video Profession / Sound Artist, Musician, Composer Sound City / Shanghai Country / CN Type / Traffic, River 1 huangpo [20:27] Huangpu, a river dividing Shanghai into two regions, is a bustling route and the source of this audio visual work.  Beginning with dense, seemingly raw industrial sounds, the four-part structure composition morphs into electronica and culminates with an abstract, meditative reconstruction of urban river traffic.  It ranges from heavy drone-like sounds to extremely short bursts of looped audio.  According to the artist, it's a “dense, textured work which explores micro and macro aspects of this environment.”.  The gradual progression from untouched to processed sound is a recurrent theme in Maridet’s work. 

Watch

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Title / M0001 Artist / shuEt, monosite (aka Sylvain Holtermann), transit (aka Cédric Maridet), boulez republic (aka Vincent Alaphilippe), Symposium 4H (aka Cédric Maridet and Sylvain Holtermann) Label / White Noise Records Format / CD Profession / Sound Artist, Musician, Composer Sound City / Hong Kong Country / CN Type / Aircraft, Transport 1 shplay / shuEt 2 bangtao / monosite 3 ligne 5 / transit 4 boulywood ghost / boulez republic 5 reseau 3 / Symposium 4H What’s unique about the work of Maridet (transit) and Holterman (monosite) is their ability to create music that conjures images of an industrial setting, yet clearly processed and reconfigured into adventurous musical structures. The last track for example, initially reminiscent of a helicopter, morphs into trance.  Their inspiration includes electronica, classical, Indian, early 1970s rock and art experiments.  Maridet explained that ligne 5, which also includes film excerpts, computer-generated sounds and the guitar, “melted daily sounds and improvisation to produce a wandering into immersive transient auditory spaces, where the facility of sight is brought back to the listening ear” and describes his work as the “creation of unstable sonic architecture through repetitive processing and alteration.” Preview

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Title / Sonic Constellations Artist / Chen, Tsai-Wei Release / 2010 Label / Self-Release Format / CD Profession / Sound Artist Sound City / London, Taipei Country / TW, UK Sound / Relocation, Dialogue

Tsai-Wei Chen’s recent dissertation "Mapping Sojourners' Soundscapes: Listening Experiences of Taipei Sojourners in London" focuses on the interconnectivity of auditory memories of Taipei and the London soundscape, using the case study of ten Taipei sojourners living in London.  Altogether, the dissertation resulted in an artist’s book, CD, online sound map and four sound installations.  Chen explains, “Being influenced by the auditory memories of homeland, their spatial, temporal and cross-cultural movements and interactions are perceived and negotiated through sounds.  The sonic constellations that have formed from the past auditory experiences provide the necessary compass for navigating through London’s soundscape.”    Taiwan Soundscape Blog, Dissertation Outline