On this Vinyl, artists, musicians, scientists, composers, a radio astronomer and a field linguist take catastrophe as their point of departure and reveal the importance of sound and auditory perception to this imagining. Produced by Jump Ship Rat and compiled by artists Ben Parry and Alan Dunn, the collection is an eclectic mix of, soundscapes, low frequency transmissions, sonifications, noise patterns and field recordings; crashing waves, creaking glaciers, voices, breathing, children playing and languages dying.
Since time in memoriam, artists have visualised that moment when life collapses, when order ends, when our presence on this earth is brought into insignificance and we are asked to consider sizes, lengths of time and concepts that are almost beyond us. What if in the abundance of images, the image did not survive in the darkness? When the image stops, the deafening cacophony of the metropolis subsides and the noise and thought pollution clears, does the clarity of sound remain? The static hum, crackle of left-over electricity, inaudible frequencies, quietness of absence, transmission, signal, no signal, broken interference, catastrophic silence.
1 Gina Czarnecki
Internal Blood Rush
The sounds of contortionist Iona Kewney, recorded by Chris Watson from inside and outside the body whilst performing endurance pieces. See
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2 Chris Watson
Longshore Drift
Extract from Longshore Drift, developed during the week-long Faster Than Sound residency at Snape which explored the natural soundscape around Britten’s Aldeburgh. Chris Watson is a sound recordist specialising in natural history, with extensive work for radio, film, television and CDs released through Touch Music.
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3 Ben Parry
Is there anybody out there?
Familiar phrases and utterances from Science Fiction film sub-genres of post-apocalypse and disaster. An audio collage of cuts, samples, edits and rips from cult Cinema takes the catastrophic environments of a post nuclear world and the horror of zombie infested cities; humanity’s near extinction – waking up to find you may be the last person on earth – the struggle to stay alive and the desperate search for survivors.
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4 Thomas Ashcraft GWEN
Synthetic Telepathy
The Ground Wave Emergency Network (GWEN ) is an array of radio transceivers distributed across the continental USA, operating in the low frequency band, and intended for military communications during a nuclear war. Some people think it also serves as a medium of government mind control or something termed “synthetic telepathy”. WARNING: Please do not listen to this recording if you are high or in an altered state of consciousness!
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5 Pépé Bradock
Rhapsody In Pain (a capella)
The Rhapsody in Pain study, originally composed 2004-6, extends the range of the voice’s timbre, revolutionizing le “doighte et decoupe” by new requirements and bringing together in a unique way, technical problems and musical deepness; behind didactic needs, it brings to the human voice the freedom of style. Copyright Atavisme.
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Recordings from a Dark City I The background from Recordings from a Dark City II, Chris Leete’s ultrasonic recordings of offices and data being sent to printers. After Luc Besson.
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7 Peter Cusack
Chernobyl Sarcophagus
Recorded 20 years after the accident, this is the sound of the sarcophagus that now covers the exploded Reactor 4 at Chernobyl. Cracks regularly appear in the concrete and maintenance work is continuous. An entirely new structure is being planned that will totally enclosed the current one, yet no one is really sure exactly how much nuclear material remains inside.
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8 Jocelyn Robert
We won, On a gagné
The track starts with the voice of the most bizarre man the artist has ever seen, namely a fat dwarf at Quebec’s fair, yelling in a 4 dollar microphone seated on top of a pile of wooden boxes surrounded by flashing lights and plastic fur bears.
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9 [zygote] closed vessel
Ausstrahlung closed vessel: Ausstrahlung contains found vocal and local artefacts, and texts derived from Rudi Dutschke, Antonio Negri, Louis Althusser, Guy Debord, and Hans G. Helms. [zygote] is Antti Sakari Saario and Martin Iddon
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10 Noise Club
The Earth Dies Screaming
Named after the 1964 British sci-fi film of the same name, the track uses samples recorded from a number of sources, including gun-shots, children’s toys, fireworks and car engines. All recording and editing by Simon Jones and Mike Loftus. Noise Club is a sound-art group based in Liverpool and formed in 2003.
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11 Andrea Polli Cape Royds
An Adelie penguin rookery
‘Sonic Antarctica’, features natural and industrial field recordings, sonifications and audifications of science data and interviews with weather and climate scientists. The areas recorded include: the “Dry Valleys” (77°30?S 163°00?E) on the shore of McMurdo Sound, 3,500 km due south of New Zealand and the geographic South Pole (90°00?S). Full length original interviews and sound recordings.
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12 Hilary Mullaney
low_r Turning Insides Out
Perfect-Imperfect voices releasing themselves while being inhaled back within. Hilary Mullaney is a composer based in Dublin, Ireland.
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13 David Harrison
Lost tongues
On this recording the Yimas people of the Karawari River basin, in Papua New Guinea, re-enact an initiation ceremony. They are speaking the highly endangered Karim language, now close to extinction. Recorded by linguist K. David Harrison, for the Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages, 2009. Copyright is retained by the Yimas people.
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14 AD&THEFILMTAXI
Recordings from a Dark City II
Featuring Chris Leete’s Shuttle, Derek Audette’s Timestream Station and readings by Zak.
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15 Andrea Polli
I don’t have the data (extract) From Sonic Antarctica. The Antarctic is unlike any other place on earth: geographically, politically and culturally. It is a frontier where borders and nationalities take a back seat to scientific collaboration and cooperation, a place where the compass becomes meaningless, yet, navigation is a matter of life and death.
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16 Patricia Walsh
Radio Silence
Inspired by previously secret public-announcement recordings made in the 1970′s and stored in case of nuclear attack. Patricia Walsh is a UK-based artist.
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17 Rodney Dickson
FUCKED UP
Fucked Up is an ongoing project that takes place in several cities around the world, including New York, Beijing, Rangoon and Hanoi, which references the chaotic state of the world at this time. It is an interactive event, different each time because of the culture of the country in which it takes place.
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18 Peter McCaughey
Immanent
Imminent Poet Seamus Heaney’s* box set collection has been edited chronologically to remove everything except the numbers he announces to partition the poems. Despite collapsing the rich insights of a life’s work to a dry emptied out number list, it seems something of the poetry still remains – the timbre and cadence and breathing of Heaney’s voice narrating a set of descending number sequences. The sound edit acts like a backward glance from last poem to first and the ‘countdowns’ that result seem to raise questions about the agency of our art and poetry in pausing the sea. *Seamus Heaney: Collected Poems RTÉ Faber and Faber 2009
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19 Kevin Logan
Virtual Taksin
Recorded August 2009 at Sanam Luang, Bangkok, Thailand, the track documents a demonstration and rally of thousands of anti-Government Red Shirts. Kevin Logan is based in London and his current practice incorporates moving image, plunderphonics, field recording and electroacoustic composition.
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20 Mark Whitford
Rustic Waters
Abstract sounds from extracts of natural sound recordings, manipulated to situate the listener in a different context. Mark recently graduated from Leeds Metropolitan University, working with audio, installation and film.
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21 Andrea Polli
No boundaries (extract)
From Sonic Antarctica: As an artist, Andrea Polli works with digital media. She currently works in collaboration with atmospheric scientists to develop systems for understanding storm and climate information through sound, a process called sonification. South Pole weather balloon sounding data from The Antarctic Automatic Weather Stations (AWS) Project, University of Wisconsin, Madison
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22 Adam Nankervis
Saviour Drawn and scratched from Herbert Huncke’s recitation of a spurned lover, Saviour is a short study in the possession and dispossession of an innate ability to cause strife, a justified catastrophe that lay as potential of all base beliefs. The building of infernos for the pheonix rising. The “saviour’s” attonement “I will save you” that his truth be the only truth, compelled and wielded by emotive belief in his/her causing “justifiable” carnage. This is be nature unnatural, a benign nature deformed into a malignancy unharnassed.
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23 Jonathan Swain
Tirana calling
Anyone who listened to the radio in the nineteen seventies can’t help to have heard the irritating jamming signal of Radio Tirana. This tune is Swain’s revenge on Enver Hoxha for all those ruined evenings as a child. Trying eagerly to listen to the football commentary, Leicester vs. Liverpool, David versus Goliath FA cup semi-finals, nail biting cliff-hanger matches, the final few minutes drowned out by this infuriating, repetitive fanfare. With thanks to http://finetuned.org/
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24 Thomas Ashcraft
A Sonic Extrapolation into the Moment of Saddam’s Death
Saddam at the gallows audibly praying, being taunted by his executioners, praying calmly. Saddam tells them to fuck off. At 1 minute 39 seconds…..the trap door opens with a resounding whang! Saddam drops, his neck breaks ….. a violent and catastrophic assault on the organism: Inner throbbing, pulsing, flashing; “death”. Possible DMT release at death? chemical release from pineal, memory spillage; sounds and hearing ……………inner hearing and outer hearing
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25 Gintas K
happy end no conception
- happy end – let music speak for itself. Gintas K (Gintas Kraptavicius) is a sound artist born in Lithuania, exploring experimental digital music aesthetics: from overloaded massive structures, grained textures to melodic ambiences, voice and field recordings. See http://gintask.dar.lt/
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26 Peter Cusack
Early Morning Chernobyl Town
Early morning birds singing in the abandoned gardens of Chernobyl town in May 2006, 20 years after the nuclear catastrophe; species heard include nightingales, hoopoes, cuckoos, blackcap. The exclusion zone has become one of Europe’s prime wildlife havens. It shows, in this instance at least, that in the absence of the humans the rest of nature can quickly re-colonise.
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