quiet american

the droplift project ( 2000 )

'On the weekend of July 28th, 2000, across the United States and internationally, ordinary citizens walked into record stores with copies of THE DROPLIFT PROJECT hidden on their person. They proceeded to leave them, well filed, in the stacks, and they walked out.'

To find out what happened, visit www.droplift.org.


checkmate	2.3 MB	The vocal track was recorded in the living room a few months ago as part of an unfinished pop track. Nod to Nobukazu Takemura and Curd Duca for the glitch scene vocal-cuisinart aesthetic.

ct-locations II ( 2002 )

For a chain tape collective compilation based on site-specific field recordings. Each participant documents a location around the world using only sound recorded in that place. Originally compsed in 2001, the compilation finally became available in 2003.

For more information visit www.loopxchange.com.


seven minutes in tibet	9.6 MB	Composed completely with sounds gathered in Lhasa, Tibet. The distorted, stuttering singing voice is from a TV that was having problems decoding an MPEG video stream. The first in a series exploring palindromic composition, to be titled catoptromancy.

60" somewhere (else) ( 2002 )

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this compilation here.

Two tracks, one for each half of a two-part project by ven voisey of throat.org: 60" somewhere, a collection of one-minute field recordings from around the world; and 60" somewhere else, a collection of one-minute compositions made entirely from the submissions to the former.

For more information on ven's work, please listen to the monolog he submitted as part of the Quiet, Please documentary.


somewhere	2.2 MB	The backwaters of Kerala, southern India. My wife and I chartered a houseboat and drifted for a few days along quiet canals. Evening from our bamboo roofed bedroom: rain on the river, crickets softly singing, the voices of our small crew. In the first few seconds, a frog plashes past.
somewhere else	1.4 MB	Composed using elements of each of the twenty-odd submissions to 60" somewhere, including my own.

phonography.org ( 2002 )
compositions using field recordings volume 1

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this compilation here.

My contribution to a two-disk set consisting entirely of composed field recordings, curated and produced by Dale Lloyd's and/OAR in conjunction with www.phonography.org. Anyone interested in field recordings, but particularly their use for aesthetic reasons, should join the phonography high-quality mailing list.

For more information on Dales's work, please listen to the interview we conducted as part of the Quiet, Please documentary.


calisthenic	5.7 MB	An exercise in negative space. Composed almost entirely from a single moment in a very short source recording, this piece was created using a sculptural process in reverse: starting from almost nothing, everything is added back, a little at a time. At the end, we escape our single moment and the context of the recording (made in Luang Prabang, Laos) is revealed. This track also appears on my album Rockets of the Mekong.

hearing place ( 2003 )
sound art exploring place from around the world

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this compilation here.

My contribution to a The Australian Sound Design Project release in conjunction with Australia's Move Records, documenting the Project's exhibition and audiotheque. The exhibition was produced to coincide with the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology Symposium held at the Victorian College of the Arts during March of 2003.

I was invited to participate in the Audiotheque, which brought together 59 artists from 13 countries. Work was presented at listening stations accompanied with projected texts on each work and biographies of each artist.


beach rain	9.7 MB	'Rain on my poncho as I stroll on the Nha Trang beaches.' So I described the track Beach Rain, one of my Vietnam field recordings; this is a much longer excerpt from the original recording, a favorite among my own recordings.

phonography.org - 4 ( 2003 )
field recordings from the phonography list

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this compilation here.

My contribution to the fourth installment in the ongoing field recording compilation series from phonography.org on Seattle-based and/OAR in conjunction with www.phonography.org.

This compilation, unlike the composer's compilation above, features selected but unedited field recordings.


donkeys leaving marpha, nepal	9.6 MB	The ubiquitous melodious ringing of donkey bells followed us around the Annapurna Circuit, a popular hiking tour of the Himalayas in central Nepal (the sound so compelled me, the last day of the trek I bought one of the bells, which hangs by our bed). To make this recording, I had to kneel between two walls of mantra-carved Mani stones to shield from the fierce wind; you can hear the wind blowing the squeaky door of an unoccupied building nearby. Similar donkeys we photographed in another part of the same valley are pictured here.

praeface ( 2003 )

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this compilation here.

My contribution to the inaugural compilation, a mission statement if you like, for the San Francisco-based experiemental label Praemedia,

The label was founded by local experimental musician (and Field Effects alumnus) Lance Grabmiller.


mama	4.8 MB	A few young Indian men 'eve-tease' my wife in a public park in Kochi, Kerala; in the background, a merry-go-round squeaks and bus drivers rev their engines in the nearby depot. This was an experiment for me of a new direction: framing unaltered field recordings with just-audible pure sine frequencies, selected to illuminate the frequency distribution of the recordings. In this case a second frequency slightly detuned from the first fades in and out, introducing and then removing 'beats' over the course of the piece.

sonic scope 04 ( 2004 )

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this compilation here.

My contribution to a compilation from Portguese label Grain of Sound, who also released my Rockets of the Mekong.

Sonic Scope is an annual festival of experimental sound-art and music held in Lisbon; the CD is a compilation 'comprising projects and sound artists that performed live at the festival and several others specially invited to this record.' Alas, I was merely one of the latter.


buriganga canon	9.5 MB	Composed from a single recording made on the wonderful vast, dirty, heavily-trafficked Buriganga river in the heart of Dhaka, Bangladesh; you hear the original recording unedited at one point. The chugging diesel engines of many unbelievably low-riding boats in the river provide the percussion; the horns you hear are unlayered — the interval that they strike was one of those magic moments field recordists live for. You can hear an excerpt of the source recording here as it was the one-minute vacation posted September 22, 2004. This is the first track of an album I'll eventually make entirely using recordings from Bangladesh.

far afield ( 2005 )

Also available here.

My contribution to a compilation curated by Fred Yarm of work from the 'spectrum between Musique Concrete and Phonography.'

The compilation was released by Webbed Hand, one of many small netlabels that circumvent the logistical burden but also wider exposure of traditional distribution by instead offering their albums as free downloads.


khulna station	8.4 MB	Composed from recordings made in and around Khulna, Bangladesh, this was a latter-day attempt by me to recapture the pop-music appeal of another train-sound-based composition, Three Trains from Vox Americana. This work was dedicated to Andrew Raffo Dewar, an ethnomusicologist and talented musician with whom I had a lengthy, healthy, and productive (if sometimes quite passionate) debate about the ethics of field recording on several mailing lists. Like Buriganga Canon, above, this track will someday grace an album made using recordings from Bangladesh.

incidental amplifications ( 2006 )

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this compilation here.

My contribution to a compilation from Australian label Room 40 released to accompany a public sound installation project in Brisbane, both curated by Lawrence English and Lloyd Barrett.

This project was intended to showcase precisely those sounds in the ambient soundscape that are intended to be obscured by Muzak and similar environmental engineering techniques. (Incidentally this is one of several compilations I participated in that includes personal field recording inspiration Chris Watson.)


sales pitch phase	8.3 MB	This track combines two recording of the ubiquitous sample-looping recoreded sales pitches my wife and I experienced in China. These particular recordings document examples from the large city of Wuhan. I was taken by the unintentional beauty of street noise mixing with the phasing of slightly different length versions of the same come-on.

recorded in the field by... ( 2006 )

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this compilation here.

My contribution to a compilation from German label Gruenrekorder.

This project was intended to showcase the label's commitment to phonography and the art of the unedited field recording, an art practiced by curators Roland Etzin and Lasse-Marc Riek. (Incidentally this the second compilation I participated in that also includes my personal field recording inspiration Chris Watson.)


three sides of the Ávilas	10.6 MB	This track combines three otherwise-unedited recordings which showcase the sounds that surround the lives of Jesús Ávila Gainza and his brother Julio. The brothers are professional musicians from Guantánamo, Cuba; my wife and I met them in Havana and subsequently traveled with them to meet their families and see their homes in Guantánamo. Jesús and Julio, and the sounds of their lives, were the subject of Guantánamo Express which premiered on Kunstradio (Austria) in May. This recordings here are of Jesús' backyard; the sound of his brother-in-law attempting to fix a radio at his workbench; and the sound of Julio's mother singing a song of lament in her livingroom.

may 6, 2001 ( 2006 )

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this compilation here.

My contribution to a compilation from Seattle-based and/OAR.

This project collected tracks composed by five artists using as sole source material a tape recording made by Kenneth Kirschner on May 6, 2001, in the final district of Manhattan — a location significant for being in the shadow of the World Trade Center complex.


negative architectures	7.4 MB	Working with Kenneth's field recording was an interesting challenge for me in several dimensions. Purely sonically, the tape recording he made was of much lower fidelity than I tend to strive for in my own field recording. As a result, the usual processes I would consider compositionally turned out to be of little use. Philosophically, I work almost exclusively with materials I myself have recorded, which document my own experience of place; it is that experience I usually refer to, if only implicitly or subconsciously, when I work. To work with someone else's experience, especially of a place subsequently burried under tons of twisted referential meanings, was quite a challenge. Reflecting on these challenges, I produced a piece using almost entirely subtractive processes (one inspiration for the title); in addition to using tools to remove sound selectively, I also twisted and folded the results as I went. The final composition is hence in some ways my sonic equivalent of the now nearly archetypal images of the torqued skeletons replacing the fallen towers. Note: this version of the track varies slightly from the version that appeared on the and/OAR compilation, which completists should purchase to support the [fabulous] label.

field recording all-stars ( 2007 )

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this compilation here.

My contribution to a compilation from Dielectric Records.

This project joined Dielectric's Drone and Minimalist 'All-Stars' compilations; nine other field recordists and I were asked to contribute (in addition to compositions of our own, such as the one here) a set of recordings relating to particular themes or subjects; these were woven into a long monolithic (if erratic) soundscape by Dielectric's Die Elektrischen.


rainmaking (joshua tree)	7.9 MB	A close re-casting of a personally significant deep listening experience in Joshua Tree National Park, in southern California. While recording at golden hour that rarest of sounds, running water in a desert, a small airplane flew overhead; I was crouched low in a resonant pocket in the eroded rock, and when the drone of the plane reached a particular pitch in its Doppler descent, the entire space resonated loudly sympathetically, overloading my microphones. In this recording you hear both that moment, and through light recomposition, its psychic ripples through my memory... my original notes here.

favourite places ( 2008 )

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this compilation here.

My contribution to a compilation from Audiobulb Records.

In 2007, David Newman of Audiobulb asked a number of sound artists and musicians to contribute work in two parts to this compilation, on the theme of favorite place: first, a source field recording made in the chosen place; second, a composition based on that recording; and a photograph.


chai in the city of light	6.3 MB	Original notes here. Briefly, this is a reworking of the source recording below, a reconstruction of the same moment in time, as it might be heard if the veil of illusion were torn assunder, and the sacred nature of life (in all its expressions) in Varanasi, city of light, was revealed.
chai wallah ambiance	5 MB	Original notes here. Briefly, this is a recording of chai being made in Varansi, on the banks of the Ganges in central north India.