Recorded with a stereo microphone inserted into the mouth of a metal drainpipe following a downpour of rain. Rhythmic staccato drips with tight echo. At some points the percussive hits are reminiscent of a typewriter. Passing traffic audible in background.

From the new LP - 'Sonograph Sound Effects Series Volume 2: Public and Domestic Plumbing and Sanitation' (CCP007)

BUY NOW: callingcardspublishing.bandcamp.com/album/s…itation

Mark Vernon presents the second volume of his Sonograph Sound Effects Series – the follow up to the unexpectedly popular ‘Sounds of the Modern Hospital’ LP. This time the focus is on sounds of plumbing and sanitation: drainpipes, plugholes, leaks, squeaky taps and cisterns.

Vernon has recorded many of the sounds from unusual perspectives, in extreme close-up scenarios, using contact mics or small binaural microphones to get into tiny inaccessible spaces. There is also a particular focus on plumbing on-board vehicles and vessels in motion. The intention here is to reveal the marvellous within the most mundane and every day of sounds.

The record masquerades as a collection of generic archetypal sounds whilst in actuality it revels in the specific and unique – some of the most idiosyncratic and characterful instances of such sounds. No two gurgles are alike.

As an avid collector of sound effects records these obsolete discs have gradually taken on new meaning for Vernon as unintended audio time capsules. As their use value has decreased their value as historical audio documents has grown. To produce a sound effects LP in the age of digital audio libraries is an anachronistic gesture intended to elevate what purports to be a generic collection of recordings intended for functional use to the level of an artwork.

The album is in part a homage to classic ranges of sound effects albums such as the BBC Sound Effects Library - even down to the utilitarian design and functional descriptions of the sounds (a key aspect of this release). Such generic collections of sounds were intended to fulfil the needs of professional and amateur broadcasters, filmmakers and theatre producers. However, through careful selection and sequencing it is also intended that this record works as a linear sound composition.

>>> Utilitarian unsounds for undisclosed purposes <<<

All Recordings made by Mark Vernon
Sleeve Design and Artwork by Marc Baines

Drainpipe Drips - Following a sudden downpour

exomusicology, alien civilization musical sample

exomusical modulations 9823 44100hz infrasound recording

Taken from my album "Homegrown Apples" released on Whitelabrecs:

https://whitelabrecs.bandcamp.com/album/homegrown-apples

Homegrown Apples

Lichen

Dampener

Original composition: demo soundtracks for a documentary film.

Granular Synth Sampled Test A

Following a run of chamber recordings, Samuel Reinhard returns with a suite of electroacoustic collages. 

"Movement", the New York–based composer’s latest offering, is built from notes softly held. In his ongoing investigation of musical duration, perception, and attention, Reinhard deemphasizes progress through an embrace of repetition and negative space, inviting listeners to linger in time. Instrumental recordings are arranged according to a predetermined system, iterating fragments of sound in overlapping intervals of various sizes. Delicately layered snippets of decaying piano are joined by cello (Leila Bordreuil), bass flute (John Also Bennett), double bass (Vincent Yuen Ruiz), baritone sax (Michael Biel), and harp (Shelley Burgon). This breadth of instrumentation, arriving as individual notes stretched and overlapped, is treated not as an opportunity for immersive coalescence, but rather a gentle augmentation of texture, free-floating counterpoint. Notes are accompanied by the traces of the bodies and actions that produce them: a hand pressing a key or an arm keeping a bow aloft; breath filling an instrument’s body or glancing off its surface; a string vibrating and then softening to stillness. In sum, we hear resonance in the process of being sustained, as well as in the release that follows.

Movement is a joint release from Hallow Ground and Präsens Editionen, and follows offerings by Kali Malone, Lawrence English, and FUJI||||||||||TA  on Hallow Ground, and Robert Turman, Magda Drozd, and Anna Homler on Präsens Editionen.

Samuel Reinhard - No. 1

Avant le Rivage takes us back to the poetics of a liminal space in its original definition : a place of transition, of change ; a place that contains the source of a reverie. At the heart of Mélodie Blaison's music, the shore is not seen as an elementary boundary between water and land. Rather, it is a crossroads of prolific inter-relations, a breeding ground for heterogeneous temporalities that invite disembodied contemplation.

In this way, the sound materials used by the composer are intertwined to construct a series of impressions rather than a path. Her work is characterised by a long-term practice of breathing through the use of flutes. From Pluie + Pluie onwards, the listener becomes familiar with these diffuse breaths that fade into the distance. At once misty curtains and traces of imaginary worlds in the making, Mélodie Blaison's flute lines give her music a spectral body.

In addition, the artist works by playing with echoes. The percussion bounces and transposes, the synths speed up and slow down, the field recordings metamorphose. As if each component contained the seed of a communication that never stops searching itself. The last track, which gives the album its title, resonates with these multiple trajectories, so many intimate immensities that it's up to us to approach.

Mélodie Blaison is a French artist currently based in Brussels. Her work is a space for experimentation, combining modular sculptures, immersive installations and sound objects. She is interested in the hybrid spaces that fiction can generate, while questioning our relationship with the world through creative processes rooted in care, ecofeminist theories and the poetic mapping of speculative worlds. Avant le Rivage is her second album, following on from VINTVRI, released on Grande Rousse Disques in 2022.
released May 17, 2024

paru le 17 mai 2024 on Wabi-Sabi Tapes

composed and mixed by Mélodie Blaison
mastered by Adrien Lambert
artwork by Mona Chancogne
text by Edouard Lambert
printed at toner toner, screen printing workshop at Grrrnd Zero, Vaulx-en-Velin

Dans un Mirage froid

Twilight Kingdom

Lisa Gerard-Our Kingdom Came

Recording of the London tube, spring 2012. Nothing more to say, as you can hear were it all happened...:-)

Field Recording No.05 - Tube Underground Train, London, UK

This album focuses on a derelict and abandoned holiday resort at Laem Thian bay on the east coast of the island of Koh Tao in Thailand. The resort is situated in a small cove that is only accessible on foot via an overgrown path and a walk of several miles - a journey very few tourists bother to make. It is clear at first sight that the fading white building has been vacated for some time. The concrete structure opens out onto a small sandy beach that would have provided an idyllic holiday setting at one time. A number of palm-thatched holiday cottages with dilapidated roofs slide down the hillside. There are signs of vandalism; graffiti decorates the walls, the remains of camp fires, broken glass and other detritus litter the floors - but remnants of the previous occupants also remain. Children’s toys, kitchenware, hand written notes, menus, mattresses, a plastic telephone and four cassette tapes - rusty, caked in sand, weather damaged and corroded by the humid salty sea air. 

There is a haunting quality to the location that left a deep impression on me. The sense of isolation and abandonment it engendered was in stark contrast to the rest of the island, and indeed the rest of Thailand as I experienced it. This feeling stayed with me and in some way it permeated the rest of my stay in the country. It is that feeling that I wanted to convey through this work.
Mark Vernon.
------------------
Mark Vernon is a Glasgow-based artist whose work exists on the fringes of sound art, music and broadcasting. At the core of his practice lies a fascination with the intimacy of the radio voice, environmental sound, obsolete media and the re-appropriation of found recordings. He incorporates these diverse elements into radiophonic compositions for broadcast, fixed media and live performances. His solo and collaborative music projects have been published through labels including Kye, Staalplaat, Ultra Eczema, Entr’acte, 3Leaves, Staubgold and Gagarin Records, as well as a series of small CDR and LP editions on his own meagre resource imprint. Along with Barry Burns Mark produces the Radiophrenia 24 hour radio festival.

The Lost Resort - Mark Vernon - Ribbons of Rust out June 26

from a forthcoming release of work created using JrF adapted geophones to record the sound of the world turning on its axis and structural resonances in urban and non-urban locales.

resonant constant (extract) - headphones required

Field recording, Experimental, Found Sound, Granular Synth and Tape based  music compositions.  Soundscapes for Film.

Granular Synth Sampled Test A

Acoustic59