A little over a year ago, my spring mixtape reflected the growing state of the world by having Virus as its theme. Shortly after that, as lockdown kicked in, i switched from a quarterly to a weekly sequence of Isolation Mixtapes, supplemented with the Outside-In series exploring field recordings from around the world. Now, at time of writing, lockdown has just ended here in the UK, so to reflect something of the joy i’m sure pretty much all of us here feel at being able to get out and about properly again, for the new 5:4 mixtape i’m returning to the world of field recording. In general, i’ve avoided typically acousmatic music in favour of tracks that engage more directly with the details of the sound itself, rather than seeking to weave it into something larger. The results tend to veer between poles of recognition, sometimes instantly identifiable, sometimes marvellously abstract – occasionally simultaneously.
After such a miserable time throughout 2020 and the first few months of this year, i regard this new mixtape – and this is how it felt as i was creating it – as a tribute to, and a revelling in, the epic diversity of noise in the outside world, from the tiniest, most easily missable sounds to unavoidably in-your-face crashes and smashes. Hopefully it won’t be too much longer before all of us around the world can be experiencing these sounds for real again. Meanwhile, here are two hours of tracks that ruminate, meditate, manipulate and celebrate field recordings in a variety of wondrous forms.
The tracklisting in full is shown below, together with approximate timings and links to obtain the music.
- 00:00:00 Steve Peters – 1 a.m. to 2 a.m. (from HERE•INGS: a sonic geohistory)
- 00:02:42 Dan Powell – A Walk to the Sea: Exceat to the Coastguard Cottages [excerpt] (from At Cuckmere – free download)
- 00:06:20 Thomas Tilly – Crossroads, nodes [excerpt] (from Script Geometry)
- 00:10:02 Francisco Lopez – Untitled #247 [excerpt] (from The Sound Ecology: Range)
- 00:14:36 Chris Watson – Los Mochis [excerpt] (from El Tren Fantasma)
- 00:17:59 Miguel Isaza/Mise_En_Scene – Selected fragments 2 [excerpt] (from Selected fragments – free download)
- 00:22:58 Simon Whetham – Contact [excerpt] (from Contact – free download)
- 00:28:00 Annea Lockwood – A Sound Map of the Housatonic River (excerpt) (from a quiet position – edition one: field fest)
- 00:33:18 Georgia Rodgers – Line of Parts [excerpt] (from Notes from the Forest Floor / Line of Parts)
- 00:38:35 Vanessa Rossetto – Swim Bladder [excerpt] (from Mineral Orange)
- 00:43:16 EARLabs 3 – jsj [excerpt] (from Helix)
- 00:48:50 Hecq – Dis (from Night Falls)
- 00:54:09 Philip Sulidae – Strife [excerpt] (from Petrification and Strife – free download)
- 01:00:26 Steve Peters – 2 p.m. to 3 p.m. (from HERE•INGS: a sonic geohistory)
- 01:03:22 John Wiggins – Among The Unimaginable (2015) (from The Listened To Sound)
- 01:08:54 Jonathan Coleclough – Flutter (part 2) [excerpt] (from Flutter)
- 01:13:43 Kenneth Kirschner – October 22, 2000 [excerpt] (from kennethkirschner.com – free download)
- 01:19:19 Fennel – Fluid Boundary / Radiant Yellow, Humid Green [excerpt] (from A Leap Across A Chasm – free download)
- 01:24:37 Francisco Meirino – Les oiseaux du lac Stymphale [excerpt] (from Travaux)
- 01:31:24 Erin McKimm – Dam Atmosphere with Frogs and Birds (slowed x 2) (from a quiet position: wired lab)
- 01:34:14 Douglas Quin – Antarctic: 77° 37’ S 165° 48’ E [excerpt] (from Fathom)
- 01:40:07 Christopher McFall – Blackbird Fray/Angel Frame By Frame/Drips Of Desperate Sea/20,000 Leagues: The Lullaby [excerpt] (from The Anatomical Submissiveness Of Lions)
- 01:44:56 Stéphane Garin & Sylvestre Gobart – Oscwiecim-Krakow. Train. February 23th 2006 (from Gurs/ Drancy/ Bobigny’s Train Station/ Auschwitz/ Birkenau/ Chelmno-Kulmhof/ Majdaneck/ Sobibor/ Treblinka)
- 01:46:25 Stefan Fraunberger – Czernowici, Jewish Cemetary, September 2009 [excerpt] (from Gilgit – Czernowici – free download)
- 01:49:07 Collin Thomas – April Triptych [excerpt] (from April Triptych – free download)
- 01:51:55 Darius Ciuta – Zi – um ( r ) [excerpt] (from Zi – um ( r ) – free download)
- 01:57:00 Steve Peters – 7 p.m. to 8 p.m. (from HERE•INGS: a sonic geohistory)
