02. Yannick Dauby - Bird Sanctuary
Sunset near the Bird Sanctuary in Keoladeo Park, Rajasthan.

03. Toy Bizarre - KDI DCTB 130
Recorded August 2000. Brassac (82). A hot summer, around midnight. Basically, this is just a night walk (full moon) in a field of corn, in southwest France. The recording is full of tape hiss but is very interesting on a stereo image level, full of small details in the background; that's why I decided to keep it. Dedicated to headphone listening only.

04. Jon Tulchin - Tree Creatures [MP3 - 7.2 MB]
Equipment: DAT recorder with stereo mic. Location: central Florida.

05. Marcos Fernandes - April Showers
'April showers' was recorded on a rare rainy Saturday morning in my backyard/patio in San Diego, California using a Denon portable DAT recorder and a Sony stereo mic.

06. Marcelo Radulovich - Escalator at the San Diego Zoo
Summer 2000, walkabout zoo, recording sounds, lured by the hum of the escalator. Mini Disc; Sony stereo mic.

07. Christopher Delaurenti - Riding The 44 Back To Ballard [MP3 - 4.6 MB]
Recorded aboard a Seattle Metro bus in November 1999 with a Tascam DA-P1 outfitted with stereo Audio Technica Pro 37R microphones strapped to a Noisette Y-boom. No editing, layering, or compression.

08. Jeff Carey - Coal Train
A train delivering coal to a power plant along the Potomac River in Alexandria, Virginia.

09. Yuko Nexus6 - Mic In Refrigerator
Recorded in October 2000. Using Sony ECM909A microphone and Sony DAT Walkman.

10. Brekekekexkoaxkoax - Storage Shed
Recorded in 2000, on Rick Reed's video camera. The sounds are the vibrations of discarded computer components set into motion by a large air conditioner in the next room. No attempts were made to alter or influence the vibrations. Recording site: the IT storage room at Huston-Tillotson College.

11. Marc McNulty - Cinn
Recorded near Lake Ontario, 5/18/01. Yes, it's straight up. It does have a bit of eq. It was captured via a portable MD recorder. I dropped a mic down a sounding tube that was once used to test water temperatures, but now just makes wonderful sounds.

12. AS11 - Cleaner
It is an uncollaged situation recording using a Sennheiser ME67 and a K6 powering module.

13. Dale Lloyd - Old Snoqualmie Train Tunnel
Recorded in October 2000 at Iron Horse State Park, Washington. With flashlight in hand, I trekked toward the middle of the several mile long tunnel and placed a stereo mic in an alcove of a wall, using a Sony (WM-GX322) Walkman.

14. Rod Stasick - Bituminoise
Bituminoise is a work for a single operating asphalt melting kettle, binaural microphone and digital recording medium. For decades, I've been recording and collecting the sounds of these kettles. They are used by roofing companies for applications of asphalt to, almost solely, commercial buildings. This work involves gesture translation activity movement that uses the kettle as a fixed point. Notated chance operations are used for initial and translative volume settings as well as the above mentioned movements (though, in this case, the gestures are elongated forms so as to create smoother transitional results).

The travel section opens at the OEscalator at the San Diego zoo¹ where we hear people talking approaching the escalator, animal sounds and then the rumble of the machine itself as captured by Marcelo Radulovich, and then ending with zoo sounds again as we walk away. Chris Delaurenti takes us ORiding the 44 back to Ballard¹ a very squeaky vehicle (or seat Chris was in - or the mike was encased in polystyrene) that accelerates and decelerates along the route, accompanied by soft rumblings. One I had seen (I think) at Radiants, Jeff Carey has a single seven minute recording of a OCoal train¹ with all the noises, variations and affects you would expect, starting with a very harsh metallic scraping before the trip starts, swinging between noise and quiet periods, rumbling and clicking down the tracks.

Changing scene, Yuko Nexus6 puts a OMic in refrigerator¹ getting an ominous rumble, and then Japanese talking before the hum and wavering buzzes of machinery in Brekekekexkoaxkoax¹ OStorage shed¹. I am not exactly sure what Marc McNulty's OCinn¹ is: there is a reverberating ambience and all sorts of clanking, ringing, rolling-grunting metal noises, coming and going, layering. There is something to be said for mysterious titles, allowing you a sort of game trying to decode the auralimage. (And for those interested, on the site there is a brief description of each track - which I read after this - with recording info: and Marc says its an unmodified recording).

A OCleaner¹ walks into a room (bathroom?) gets out equipment, washes, scrubs, rinses, flushes and leaves the room: I think was As11 hiding in a cubicle. What do you do in a long, empty tunnel? You whoop and make spooky noises, which is what Dale Lloyd captures in the OOld Snoqualmie train tunnel¹ which echoes and reverberates, water drips, distant voices become a drone and people test the echo-properties. And finally OBituminoise¹ a wooshing noise that builds, slightly changes pitch and volume but reveals internal variation and layers, in an intense seven minutes before fading again.

Like a good photograph, there are lots of things to listen to/for in each of these pieces, and they also raise your awareness of the sounds around you. Well balanced and nicely programmed, it is a great listening experience. If you are interested in getting the compilation or contributing to the next, contact dale Lloyd through the site (and soon through Anomalous). (PS while I like the term, phonography uncovers some nasty web sites: pornographers use it as a key word, probably to catch illiterate searchers).

Phonography.org 1 - Frans de Wardd (Vital Weekly newsletter)
"Phonography.org is a site dedicated to the art of phonography (or field recording). "On this site you will find the unaltered environmental recordings by international artists. It's now also possible, if you are like me and hate downloading MP3s, to obtain this wonderful collection of fourteen pieces of samples of this kind of music. So we get a wide variety of birds, cars, trains, microphone in refrigerator, cleaner and tree creatures. What I especially like about most of these pieces is that the sound source is so openly mentioned. A microphone in fridge is nothing else than a microphone in fridge. It's not ambience per se, as proven by Brekekekexkoaxkoax, who has some recording of computer components in a shed. The CDR lacks any information on these recordings, which is a pity but if you go to the website, you will find all the details you need (including types of microphones if you want to do some soundhunt yourself, as new contributions are happily accepted). Great stuff ! if you dig this, I know I do.