In the morning of the last day of July, as I was about to enter the main door of an aged care nursing  home, I had to stop and step aside to make way respectfully for a trolley bearing a deceased person draped completely with deep red cloth. I do not know who they were - their name, gender, nationality, story... The body was borne into a nondescript white van.

Later, that evening, while editing and composing some field recordings for a quite different work, this particular conjunction of layers happened to align  itself, as if of its own accord, and I recalled my meeting with an unseen deceased body, neatly draped in deep red cloth, earlier that day. For that person, for every such person, I wanted to offer this sound-parable, as an aesthetic gesture of respect, mourning, but also of celebration, a confident casting and sowing of thoughts towards the all-encompassing horizon of infinity.

"Among the Seven Wise Women, one woman said, 'Sisters, you and I should not go to scenic parks to partake of worldly entertainments... Instead, let's go together to enjoy the charnel grounds.' The other women said, 'That place is full of decaying corpses. What is such a place good for?' The first woman said, 'Sisters, just go. Very good things are there.' When they arrived in the forest, the woman pointed to a corpse and said to the other women, 'The corpse is here; where has the person gone?' The women witnessed the truth and realized the way." (Dōgen's Extensive Record: A Translation of the Eihei Kōroku, translated by Taigen Dan Leighton and Shohaku Okumura, Boston: Wisdom Publications 2004, p. 120)

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2021.08.01 Parable the Second: Passage. (Παραβολὴ ἡ Δεύτερη• Πέρασμα.)

Part of a hydrophone recording I made next to an old barge at Ierapetra's port.

Ierapetra Port, Hydrophone Next To Old Barge

High-voltage pole near the railroad tracks. Recorded with LOM Geofón and MixPre3.

Railroad Drone

02-01-2022, Poznań, ul. Botaniczna   16:01

2 stycznia ul. Botaniczna

Ceiling Lights

One half of a short EP called 'Dockside', the entirety of which can be heard/downloaded at https://mola-recordings.bandcamp.com/album/dockside-2

Bridgelift Blue

This is an edited excerpt from an overnight to morning recording made at the shore of the Coorong saltwater lagoon, for anyone who might be curious to dip in and get a taste of one way a Coorong dawn might sound, and how it did sound on this particular morning. The microphones were placed in amongst reeds near the tip of the point of land jutting out into the water, which can be seen in the track photo. This excerpt begins from around 06:25 (ACDT). Calm, cool weather conditions, with considerable condensation.

I've come to the conclusion that listening to recordings - and especially raw, unprocessed recordings - of the Coorong environment may be an acquired taste (although the taste may be acquired from a familiarity with other coastal environments and ecosystems with a similar kind of soundscape). The incessant 
 'Coorong roar' takes some getting used to, particularly when heard through headphones. It took me a long time to accept it and immerse myself in it; but eventually I found that other much quieter but higher-pitched natural details - like the calls of birds, and even the sounds of their interactions with the water of the lagoon and the air itself as they wing through it - can still be quite clearly discerned within the soundspace, without the aid of low frequency attenuation. The adjustment in my attention was more effective than an adjustment in EQ.* (A special thank you to Jan Eerala for helping to catalyse this intuition and shift in my perception (although it only works for natural sounds, of course).)

96/32 > 48/24. Edited excerpt, not processed.

Recorded on land of the Ngarrindjeri people that is now a national park.
_______________________
*Having said that, though, there are still situations in which I will use EQ for certain Coorong recordings: for example, when the subject is a specific detail, rather than the experience of the soundscape or soundfield as an integral whole.

2022.02.20 A Coorong Dawn. Waterline. Late Summer.

"Tuba Mirum" is a part of the "Dies Irae", a Latin poetic sequence used in Anglican and Catholic liturgies, especially the Requiem Mass.

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Tuba Mirum

[PL, EN below]
Zrobiłem sobie kolację i zamiast tylko siąść do stołu i zjeść, postanowiłem napalić w kominku i zjeść w takiej atmosferze. W porównaniu do ilości pracy, którą trzeba włożyć w rozpalenie pieca w kotłowni, kominek na drewno to żaden wysiłek i jedynie chwila przygotowania. Zjadłem, wypiłem piwo, a ogień z kilku kawałków modrzewia dalej się palił. Modrzew leżał w ogródku z wyrwanymi z ziemi korzeniami, powalony przez jakąś wichurę, jeszcze zanim tu przyjechałem. Pod koniec lata, kiedy bałem się, że nie będę miał na zimę dość drewna, poszedłem do niego z piłą łańcuchową i pociąłem na kawałki. Porąbany, przeleżał kilka miesięcy w kotłowni, przytulony do pieca węglowego i wysechł na wiór. Jak już teraz go rozpaliłem rozpaliłem, szkoda mi było nie zostać przy ogniu, więc poszedłem po gazetę i rozpoczęty poprzedniego wieczoru artykuł i doczytałem przy kominku.
Z czasem dołączył do mnie kot, pochwalić się upolowaną kulką papieru. Pokręciła się, obwąchała i poocierała się o rejestrator i usiadła zaraz za nim, naturalnie na etui na słuchawki.
Kominek jest zabudowany, ze szklanymi drzwiczkami. Parę minut po rozpaleniu, jak w kominie wytworzy się cug, można je otworzyć i dym nie wydostaje się na pokój. Ogień pali się wolniej niż przy zamkniętych drzwiczkach, kiedy otwarty jest nawiew powietrza. Parę razy zamknąłem drzwi, żeby nawiew rozdmuchał ogień, który powoli przygasał. Przy otwartym kominku ciepło wydostaje się swobodniej do pokoju i jest jeszcze przyjemniej.
Na stole, przy którym siedziałem, leży martwy motyl. Znalazłem go w kotłowni, za jednym z kartonów z rozpałką. Ma rozłożone na płasko skrzydła, a nie jak to przeważnie jest, kiedy zastygają i umierają, złożone. Obrus, na którym leży jest w kwiecisty wzór.

[EN]
I made myself dinner and instead of just sitting down and eating, I decided to light a fire in the fireplace and eat in this atmosphere. Compared to the amount of work that needs to be put into lighting the furnace in the boiler room, a wood fireplace is no effort and only a moment of preparation. I ate, drank beer, and the fire from several pieces of larch continued to burn. There was a larch in the garden, uprooted, blown down by some gale before I got here. At the end of last summer, when I was afraid that I wouldn't have enough wood for the winter, I went to it with a chainsaw and cut it to pieces. Chopped, it lay for several months in the boiler room, cuddled against the furnace and dried as a bone. Now that I had lit it, I did not want to leave the fire, so I went to get the paper and the article I had started the night before and finished reading it by the fireplace.
At some point, the cat joined me to show off the ball of paper she caught. She hung around, sniffed and rubed against the recorder and sat down right behind it, naturally on the headphone case.
The fireplace is built-in, with a glass door. A few minutes after lighting the fire, when a draft is created in the chimney, it can be opened and the smoke does not escape into the room. The fire burns slower than with the door closed when the air vent is open. I closed the door a couple of times to let the air vents blow on the fire, which was slowly dying out. With an open fireplace, the heat flows more freely into the room and it is even more pleasant.
There is a dead butterfly on the table where I was sitting. I found it in the boiler room, behind one of the tinder boxes. Its wings are spread flat, not folded, as is usually the case when they freeze and die. The tablecloth on which it lies is in a floral pattern.



10/01/2023
Sony PCM D100

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Zjadłem kolację i czytałem gazetę przy kominku / I had dinner and read an article by a fireplace

Sometime after 8 am on a windy wintery Saturday morning, in a national park, around 1.7 kilometres from the coastline and about 180 metres above sea level. This track comprises two different recordings that happen to include one and the same event as heard/recorded from two different locations, by two different field recording rigs: one at a distance, the other close at hand. The first rig was unattended, embedded overnight amongst native trees and bushes (cardioids in ORTF). The microphone axis was pointing in the directly opposite direction away from where the incident occurred. The second rig was portable (supercardioids in AB), being used to pick out particular soundscape details, here and there, at some distance from the first rig.

00:00:00. Recording 1: Extreme Long Shot
00:01:06. Trail bike approaching
00:02:54. Trail bike engine turned off
00:03:25. Trail bike engine turned back on, trail bike leaves
00:05:09. Trail bike out of earshot
00:06:01. End of Recording 1

00:06:05. Recording 2: Medium Close Up
00:06:46. Trail bike approaching
00:08:19. Trail bike engine turned off
00:09:11. Trail bike engine turned back on, trail bike leaves
00:11:01. Trail bike out of earshot
00:11:44. End of Recording 2

Recorded on the land of the Ngarrindjeri peoples.

2023.07.15 "You Can't Ride a Trail Bike through Here" (Long Shot And Close Up). Winter Morning.

Ierapetra Harbor - Past Midnight

Tired of being bombarded with visual images all the time, I turn myself to the sense of hearing. I invite you to listen to the world with me.
https://tomaszpizio.bandcamp.com

Zjadłem kolację i czytałem gazetę przy kominku / I had dinner and read an article by a fireplace

Tomasz Pizio

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