Some things I heard in October.
The Entertainer floats around Brighton station, bouncing off the glass ceiling.
Squealing sharp travel, the hum of movement, upper frequency details ricochet around the expansive structure clattering against glass and metal.
The Entertainer is not entertaining. A train arrives unheard, and bags pass me jingling delicately as zips and fastenings swing. A distant beep, source unknown, smears in the reverb.
Now a song that I recognise from Echo's playlist, Dance Monkey.
As I walk along the platform to the train, details diminish. It's much more enjoyable to hear the notes float towards me, rippling off every surface, merging with train drones and hiss. I'm sad to shut that soundscape out, but as the train door slides shut, it's gone, replaced with whooshing humming air and tin foil crunched brittle.
Factory songs.
A beautiful story of listening and the connection to landscape and more than human beings.
Echo and Bey are recording ASMR.
Alien rhythms and chords spiral in confusing patterns. Dance Mania, a memory from the 90s.
Digging a hole and screaming into the earth. Satisfying, popping just a little and then a flurry.
Sometimes Echo hammers the sofa cushions with his fists. 16th note pattern, velocities random, a ripping, jagged rippling of the wind.
Ghost clangs in surround. Crunch crunch pattern approaches from behind, then passes.
Squirt of compressed air. Slick wet road friction.
One side roaring white noise, the other, a hum and whine of industry. Laughter as two runners pass. A boom of hollow emptying. Just over the ridge, a face of salt air blasting.
The thick pebble dash sea wall keeps the sea force down and reflects industrial low hum and clattering from gate three where a huge crane is being fixed.
Silent silos at Gate Four, memories of foggy phantoms and damp air filters. The smooth fabric yields to the wind and I notice a deep but quieter roar as I pass, different from the high weighted frequencies of the sea.
A starling chirps, a digger squeals, a dog barks down on the beach. I quickly calculate whether the latter has a route over the boulders and pebbles to get to me.
A moment in that passage where I confuse distant food delivery truck and its jaunty ice cream van style music, with wind blowing mellifluously through a narrow path and metal railings.
All cranes silent and the usual electrical whine isn’t present. Tarpaulin on beams that run along the tops of the crane flap and crackle.
A phantom harmony blown out of the air. Dissonant blends of tones. Then a jagged, rattling power tool appears between rusty steel beams, and I see a flash of high-vis orange.
Bouncy, unstable shimmers of industrial noise.
I round another corner and a new drone appears warmer, less icy and sharp, almost soft.
Walking away from the sea, there is a sense of relief as the oppressive wide range noise is lifted like a heavy weight.
New stripes on turbine blades swish around, cutting the salty air. The markings are meant to stop birds and bats flying into them.
I found the source of the banging we had been hearing from the house. One section of the canal now has huge rusted brown sea defences like the ones on the coast. It made me think how often noise issues are worse when people are confused about the cause. Could organisations be forced to communicate to communities ahead of any loud work?
A pocket of birds unexpectedly creeps up on me.
A soft, fluffy, warm cloud embraces me, and I lean back against the tumble dryer to feel its soothing connection. My hands search out vibrations. My nose picks up freshly cleaned clothes, and the gentle churning is joined by the familiar clinks, metallics and resonant clangs of rivets, zips and buttons in the slowly spinning drum.
All of a sudden, I'm in a familiar but transformed space, a building that, for some reason, I have dark memories about. It might just be the childhood memories of the dark street on which the building stands.
We discussed the sonic impact of gentrification. We played a resonant sculpture on a new housing development, moving beaters up the structure and activating pitches rising as I near the top. The sculptures sounded better than they look. Realised I knew one of my fellow listeners who gave me great advice a couple of years ago.
Reminded again how much I enjoy transitions, shifts in perspective, new sounds revealed in the moments in between.
Turning on to St James Street and hearing conversations and human activity that seemed lost in urban swell before. Another childhood landscape.
Full of nerves before a listening workshop with University of Sussex students, I hadn't felt this so strong for a while. Sound as invitation, an experimental mode of inquiry, listening beyond sound.
The turbine sounds like a huge cave.
I enjoy being drawn to textures and shapes scattered around the space; a repeating, rhythmic pattern somewhere in the middle, delicate shells crackle unexpectedly from above, waves crash from the ceiling, unexpected drones hidden in a kitchen drawer, and a sound source placed in a mug for additional resonance and amplification.
An interaction in a Coffee Shop develops through sound. A broken microphone records only white noise. Three shells vibrate against each other with resonant twangs.
Usually these interactions are sound tracked by harsh VOIP, crackling and scraping as if R is actively moving objects against his microphone. But today, the sounds are soft, occasional thuds and brief frictions sit over and between discussions about which game to play.
Echo twists and manipulates the plastic limbs of a toy he found at the car boot sale this morning. The movements are clicky and restricted, suggesting tight joints.
Remembering the sounds of decorating from yesterday. Slick, sticky wet rollers spreading bright white, glistening trails. An aluminium step ladder emits hollow creeks and pressure flexes.
At Dela Warr Pavilion we explore how we might fill the structure with sound. Bring the sea into the building.
Greta paces from window to window in a converted industrial space. Her claws click against the concrete flooring, bouncing around the high ceilings and hard walls. She communicates her concern through barks, growls and a surprising number of alien like voice contortions, drowning out Frank on Microsoft Teams.
The washing machine beeps two short and one long, indicating the end of the program. I hear a small acoustic shroud flutter for the briefest duration, a temporary sonic imprint. Then a cheerful four note motif when I switch off the washing machine.
In between wake and sleep I hear a giant metal shovel being dragged along the road outside my house. It comes in waves with one to two seconds between each uncomfortable, ragged, scraping. At first, I can't work out what it is. It feels big in the way it bounces off the houses and fills the air. Maybe someone is pulling something along the road and it will pass. But it doesn't go, and the longer it continues, the more interested I become. I can hear what I think might be a helicopter, the whine and drone of its engine coming and going, sound waves pushed and pulled by the wind. I wonder if there is a connection. I post a message on the local Whatsapp group where, coincidentally, someone posted about a high pitched whine earlier in the evening. Within minutes, someone has suggested road resurfacing as the source, and then minutes later, it is confirmed by a neighbour.
Movement, structural vibrations, someone is coming downstairs quite quickly.
On the beach near Rock Water, listening to the new Oliver Coates album with the sea roaring to my right, I felt it then physically on my neck. I'm meeting someone soon, and I wonder what he wants to hear from me.
Muffled outside world, passing cars and occasional voices in here. I hear a request for samples and kind patience. A distant voice on the phone. Phone receiver clacks back into its cradle. Plastic, hollow, cheap mass manufacturing. Another muffled whoosh as an expensive car passes, light tapping foot falls, followed quickly by fast moving, heavier foot impacts approaching the front desk. This is a place of anxiety for poorly people needing answers. I’m waiting for my dad, listening to the everyday activity in this space that I'm witness to only briefly. Being here brings up fears about my own health and the difficult to face things about Dad's illness.
My left ear tinnitus has been quite distracting, pulsing and throbbing, making me a bit fuzzy headed. I went for dinner, followed by a film with Neil last night, before I helped him program a synth sound, the ARP 2600 oscillators provided a two note chord and a sub note. It's a fun challenge, deconstructing and reconstructing sounds.
Struggling to listen as I'm fuzzy headed and fuzzy eared. Maybe those cocktails from last night are impeding me today.