MUSlC IN THE STREETS (Recorded by T. Schwartz) (1957)

Subtitled "A fascinating collection of music and musicians recorded on the streets of New York," this album resurrects the seemingly long-lost sounds of public gathering: sociability, conviviality, hubbub and exchange. And of course performance. 

Does anyone remember this? When's the last time you've heard a busker? Seen a mall-choir? Watched a parade? These documented sonic rituals of the mundane are coming in as a restorative tonic today. NY, sure. But also anywhere. 

Folkways rarely lets us down. 

BIRD S0NGS IN Y0UR GARDEN (1961)

We've been inside, staying out of the sun and in the office. This doesn't mean our minds are not on those lounge chairs in the back yard. Professor Peter Paul Kellogg--renowned orthithologist and parabolic microphone innovator--carefully and crisply recorded these chirps and songs, while his mentor at Cornell University, Arthur A. Allen, provides the narration/ bird identification (side two is narration free). This project was also produced by the Houghton Mifflin Co. and the Federation of Ontario Naturalists in later 1963 editions, for those who care.

It's been awhile since we played and posted some unproduced nature sounds...dream it here.

ANNEA L0CKWOOD - TH0USAND YE4R DREAM1NG (1993)

As many of our posts are clearly beginning to suggest, many dream-makers tend to look eastward. Represented in sound, the patently uncanny logic of dreams often seems to lend itself to the foreign, the exotic, the orientalist. Thus even an album like this one--ostensibly about the Lascaux cave paintings--transforms contemplation of paleolithic life into something both tribal and zen-like. Here, didgeridoos, conch shells, rattles and frame-drums pull a brass and woodwind ensemble into a kind of primal and primativist study of timbre. A beautiful evocation from the fearful, mystical and mystifying youth of our species. (Check our previous Lockwood post here).

We post the 2007 reissue with Floating World (1999), an unprocessed tape-based, sound collage. 1,000 years.

R. MURRAY SCHAFER - THE VANC0UVER S0UNDSCAPE (1973)

We also played this today, adding to our sonic locations series. 'Unseen Sounds' and Acoustic Ecologies from the North American West coast ... the unyielding rhythms of nature, industry, commerce, socialization and celebration in full, beautiful splendor.

Dream it...

[Previous Soundsites: The Hudson River / New Hope, PA  / Vancouver, BC / Glacier Bay, AK / Tropical Rainforest / American Fast Food Restaurants / American Offices, Ross Dependancy (Anarctica) / Junk Yards / Holland by Boat]

S0UNDS OF MED1CINE - OPERATION-BODY SOUNDS (1955)

Field recordings from the operating room, sonic documents of medical malfunctions, and the a propos track "Sounds of the Bowels" which has been speaking to some of us in very intimate, personal ways.

Gurgle, dream, regurgitate ...

D0UGLAS QU1N - ANTARCT1CA (1998)

"Bernie Krause presents" this wonderful follow-up to the producer's own recordings in Alaska (here). Recorded primarily in the Ross Dependency of the southernmost continent, this album is comprised of faunal vocalizations that would put any sound poet to shame and "deep" elemental field recordings that outpace the most trance-inducing, deep-listening electronic composition.

Another brilliant album of nature sound from Miramar's "Wild Sanctuary."

M1CHAEL SIEGEL - THE S0UNDS OF THE JUNK YARD (1964)

Compared to its companion, Sounds of the Office, this series of field-recordings comes across as a far more visceral kind of representation, a more material and urgent document. Set into vinyl, these mostly unheard, ignored, unnoticed, forgotten, marginalized, repressed, or unwanted mechanical rumblings become foreground sounds, unlike the background sounds of the office. As a record, the sonic abstractions of labor and capital take an indexical form, and materialize here within realm of the aural...

Dreamworking...

S0LEX - AH0Y! THE S0UNDMAP OF THE NETHERLANDS (2013)

The artist took a boat through all 12 provinces of Holland recording local musicians. As a constraint, the musicians played to a loop they could hear through headphones, but could not hear what the others were playing. Solex then edited and reassembled the recordings into this soundmap. The results are a folksy cut-up sample collage, a kind of shuffle-beat techno-blues.

Appalachian Lowlands ....Pays-bas, Là-bas...

ANNEA L0CKWOOD - A S0UND MAP OF THE HUDS0N R1VER (1989)

Here is the legendary composer and experimentalist recording, mixing and collaborating with the Hudson River, from the headwaters in the Adirondacks to the Atlantic. 15 different site specific recordings trace both the natural environments of the river and the human contexts it flows through, connects with, and feeds. This is a recording that is embedded in the liquid mental zones formed by the pitches of flowing water and our dream projections of nature itself.

Dreaming downstream...

Previous dreamsites: New Hope, PA  / Vancouver, BC / Glacier Bay, AK / Tropical Rainforest / American Fast Food Restaurants / American Offices  

S0UNDS OF THE TR0P1CAL RAINF0REST (1989)

Best to end the post with the ecosystem speaking for itself, another nature recording on repeat at OWOD. "Gentle Persuasion" according to the cover. Indeed. No info on field recording artist.
From CD.

Dream...

BERN1E KRAUSE - WH4LES, W0LVES & EAGLES OF GLAC1ER BAY (1998)

A meditative and somewhat harrowing series of field recordings from a legend in the métier of sound. A short-term member of The Weavers with Pete Seeger, Bernie would become an innovator in electronic music, nature recordings and the emergent field of sound ecology. He would make the influential Nonesuch Guide to Electronic Music educational album in '67, and went on to record Moog and other synths on sessions for The Doors, George Harrison, and Stevie Wonder. He provided sound to Rosemary's Baby and Apocalypse Now, among many others. He went on to make dozens of nature recordings, of which this is one of my dreamy favorites.

THE G0LD1NG INST1TUTE  -  S0UNDS OF AMER1CAN FAST FOOD RESTAURANTS (1996)

Even with the pointed, ironic and funny narration by Golding's G. Turkington, this project provides a firm, sobering slice of sonic verisimilitude. More authentic, it would seem, than its Folkways office companion below. Which is more meditative and dreamy?

Perhaps these are the sounds that go unnoticed in our dreams as well.

M1CHAEL S1EGEL - THE S0UNDS OF THE OFFICE (1964)

A mist of Cagean inversion hangs over this record, a strange foregrounding of the unnoticed, mundane ambient noises that permeate our lives, the background that we manage to render mute most of the time and ignore. An air of musique concrète too. This "field recording" is, or seems, quite composed. Hardly any voices; only spectral office workers. The strange dishonesty of the medium. A soundtrack of disembodiment, a reenactment of the unconscious. Again, the dreamscape of capital...reflectivity, reification, repeat...

What you may be dreaming even when you're not...

SYNT0NIC RESEARCH INC. - ENVIRONMENTS 3 (THE MUSIC OF THE FUTURE ISN'T MUSIC: DAWN & DUSK AT NEW HOPE, PA) (1987)

A cross-continent companion to the previous Vancouver post. Here we have two tracks, Dawn & Dusk, field recordings of everyday life in New Hope, PA. The folks at Syntonic Research, like Henri Lefebvre, Gaston Bachelard and Michel de Certeau before them, seem to realize that quotidian experience, rooted to the materiality of living and set within the rhythms of the day, is the source of all dreamwork: the mundane, the emancipatory, the bleak.

Dream...

SAM SH4LAB1 / ADAM FR4NK - OVERPASS! A MEL0DRAMA (2007)

An aural, experiential documentary about the city of Vancouver. An experiment in psychogeography, with more than a few nods to the Situationist International and the idea of the dérive. Morton Feldman is given voice credit, as are two west-coast writers of note, Matthew Stadler and Meredith Quartermain. Sound is by the leader of the amazing band Shalabi Effect, from Montreal. "Jello Sunday" is a strange track that keeps giving. Canadada.

Dream ...

YURI KOROLKOFF & GUY CHALON - MAI 1968

A politics of dreams, in 7" vinyl. Album is subtitled: "Extraits sonores d'un film réalisé par un collectif de travail animé par Guy Chalon."

Rêve...