houseofchange

4rooms - komplette Musik zum Tanzstück houseofchange

a soundscape about Saxon Switzerland, collected over several years, 2024

english translation:

0:15 So, here's a colorful bouquet of field recordings that I made in Saxon Switzerland. First I'm standing here by the road, in a village. There's a tree in front of me. The village is at the foot of Mount Gohrisch and is also called Gohrisch. I'm not waiting for anything. I'm waiting for the bus. SUVs pass me by, all with trailers, still empty, but I realize they're going to get wood. 

2:05 One of the most important activities in Saxon Switzerland is making wood. Because the bark beetle has drilled ahead. 

3:41 In this nice springtime atmosphere, a needle always falls from a conifer tree in the conifer forest. But winter is slowly coming back and I come to Hohnstein with my heavy hiking boots. And there's a dog at the fence. Pretty poisonous. The dog kept barking forever, I stopped at the fence, but for now it needs another village experience. 

5:44 You can easily talk over that a whole sentence without it being noticed negatively.  

6:52 And now back to the forest. To mount Winterberg. On the top of which there are almost only beech trees. And these beech trees do something very strange in winter. They touch each other and because there is such a strong wind blowing at the top of the mountain, it makes a really strange sound.
I descend from the Winterberg again and come to a grotto. The dripping of the water has its own rhythm and its own echo in this grotto.
So I would say they are polyrhythmic structures. It gets even grottier with more reverb.

8:18 The grotto would also work really well as a hi-hat in a techno track. But it's not just grottoes who know their way around polyrhythms, but also the ravens from mount Zschirnstein. They are even protagonists in the legend of the Zschirnstein, where the witching hour is not between 12 midnight and 1 am, but between 12 noon to 1 pm. So if you go to the Zschirnstein during this time, you make the local demons angry. And the ravens are basically like an expression of these demons with their suddenly much darker crow. 

9:33 And the wind whistles around my ears. Summer is slowly approaching and I climb down the mountain into the Elbe valley. And every now and then a boat passes by, or maybe even an airplane. 

10:35 But what is much more important is that the crows and ravens at the start are always so beautifully reflected by the steep rock faces. 
Und das Echo dieser Krähen steckt so ein bisschen den akustischen Raum ab, in den ich dann hier so schön ins Mikrofon hineinsprechen kann. 

11:36 A cricket concert at night is a subtle affair. I like the rhythm. Those ravens, they really are everywhere. But there are also people and ferries. 

13:53 Such small, subtle paced breathing sometimes also makes progress clear. Watch out! I don't know what to do here. 
Saxon Switzerland is right on the border with the Czech Republic. And Saxon Switzerland isn't actually Saxon Switzerland at all, but Saxon-Bohemian Switzerland. But this is often forgotten. Unless a whole school trip from the Czech Republic comes to Saxon Switzerland and then sits on the S-Bahn. 

15:30 Sometimes I'm a guest at Frank's house right on the banks of the Elbe and in summer I listen to the sound of the ships that make such a psychedelic sound as they pass by. That always carries me somewhere else. The same goes for the train, which makes a huge curve in the Elbe valley and leaves a really voluminous reverb in my brain.

16:44 You can always use a good wind recording. This is one of my absolute favorite shots from Saxon-Bohemian Switzerland. It's the Bily Potok, the Weißbach, and it flows right along the border, i.e. on the international border. And I always like to listen to this field recording to calm myself down when I'm lying on the sofa and need to relax. 

18:22 It's become quite the blatant sound thing, a kind of commented soundscape with a storyteller's voice. 
Maybe that's enough sounds, right?

Die Landschaft hören / Listening the Landscape

ja, das freie radio in dresden ist mal wieder in gefahr - bzw. immer noch. an der situation hat sich nichts geändert: die sächsische landesmedienanstalt zahlt die sende- und leitungskosten immmer noch nicht. aber mit ein bisschen geld von euch - in regelmässigen dosierungen gespendet - könnt ihr euer radio retten:
https://www.coloradio.org/site/5mal200

5mal200 - rette dein radio!

my main account @shannon_soundquist

round photo: Phil Dittrich

Antje Meichsner

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