For me, this is the sound of pandemic lockdown. 
As so many people, I am exclusively working from home for more than a year now, trying to do my job over the internet with a video conference app.
Last year, during the first lockdown I had a brain storm session and somehow everyone left his microphone open but no one spoke because we were all reading a document. These are the first 4 minutes and 33 seconds of that session.
You hear unintentional sounds of the participants, the constant opening and closing of the dynamic and spectral filters of the compression algorithm that tries to react to possible speech, ambient noise of the different rooms, self noise of the poorly wired microphones and some aliasing keyboard and mouse clicks, all forming the sound track of a pandemic lockdown.

Silent Video Conference (= sound of a pandemic lockdown)

Two weeks before my sons birth, I managed to record his heartbeat in the belly of his mother with a contact microphone.

The heartbeat of an unborn child

Full release on Bandcamp: https://willemsannen.bandcamp.com/album/33-rpm

Listening to the medium, ignoring the 'message'.

33 RPM combines two integral recordings of one side of a vinyl record as played on a record player.

Side A / Dust are all the clicks and pops that come with playing a record. Instead of cleaning up the recorded sound of the vinyl with software, I inverted the process. I left the 'unwanted' sound and deleted all the sound and music that was pressed on to the vinyl.
I feel it might be catalogued under ASMR. 😉

Side B / Torque is a multi microphone recording of the shifting electromagnetic field that occurs when the platter of a turntable spins around. I mixed all the stereo microphone perspectives together consecutively to create an intense drone piece.

self released on January 12, 2022

33 RPM

33 RPM - Side A / Dust  ( Snippet )

Sometimes sound can be very present.
Whiteout are 4 sounds from different perspectives that completely dominate a space for a moment in time.

Whiteout - Alpine Valley (Snippet)

13 vinyl records full of sound effects, intended to accompany the screening of otherwise silent home made super 8 films, were sampled and rearranged by association to form a new sound track for an imaginary film.

All sounds sampled from vinyl & recomposed by Willem Sannen
Artwork by Tariq Heijboer

Funeral

Purr

Getaway

Torture Scene

Combustion

Water On Tape

Rowing At Night

Fireplace

Horses

Trip

Boom!

Matchstick is the third track from the field recording album Plots.
You can buy the album on the bandcamp page of Sonospace:
https://sonospace.bandcamp.com/album/plots

Plots is a series of field recordings that celebrate the passing of time through brief and transient sounds like drops, hits, bangs, tics, etc.  

Plots is an onomatopoeia in the Dutch language and means suddenly and unexpectedly.

released March 21, 2019

Recorded, mixed and mastered by Willem Sannen 
Photo by Maya Wilsens

Plots

Matchstick

'Matchstick'  from the album: Plots

Performing 'Lente-Suite voor Lilith' from the dutch poet Lucebert on location.
Voice: Jan Vandenabeele

Lente-Suite voor Lilith (Lucebert)

Hydrophone recording of little vortexes forming in a turn of the 'Gete' stream.
3D picture by Wilfried Pulinckx 
Stereo headphones and 3D glasses are highly recommended!

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email: soundslikewillem(at)gmail(dot)com

Willem Sannen

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