zuihitsu.org

'Memory Debt: Slopes and Residues'

My friend Tyler is starting a new radio show and you should all listen to it, as his blurb makes absolutely clear:

This show features a combination of field recordings and experimental sound art (Glenn Gould, John Cage, Janet Cardiff, Max Neuhaus), home-recorded folk and pop songs (Charlie Mcalister, Simon Joyner, Wio), as well as more traditional indie rock (Palace, Neutral Milk Hotel, Animal Collective) and British shoegaze (My Bloody Valentine, Slowdive, Cocteau Twins). I will focus primarily on artists who explore non-conventional recording techniques and experiment with ways of capturing sound outside of the studio context. More generally, rather than conceiving of radio as a means for merely transmitting prerecorded material, I am interested in approaching the medium as a potential site of artistic production – stitching together acoustic fragments and layers of static, noise, and junk, to create spontaneous sound collages. What would it sound like, for example, if one superimposed a handheld recording of an industrial dishwasher and two people fighting in a wooden room, on top of an audio biography of Helen Keller, and used the resulting chaotic garble as a segue between a Cocteau Twins song and a home-recorded folk song about owls and fried oysters? I suspect that, at the very least, certain familiar songs would be reenergized by the new contexts in which they were embedded and, if one listened even more closely, occult voices would eventually begin to emerge alongside the death rattle of the everyday. Running water would sound like fires in the street.