https://auraldetritus.bandcamp.com/
This is a short album of what I refer to as "process sound walking", whereby I freely interact verbally with a pair of portable recording devices while exploring a location in what is to me a kind of rural mini-dérive.
The possibilities afforded by a pair of recording devices is explored most thoroughly in "Back Toward The South Downs Way A Skylark Nesting" where the waves of feedback, wind-noise, birdsong and distant narrative were created by overdubbing from one device to the other in real time. My motivation for this activity is to make my own record my perception of a gradual insidious encroachment of development of landscape, and subsequent potential loss of wild habitat in rural and semi-rural areas. Although the South Downs is protected from development having been given the status of a National Park, planning permission had been granted for 500 new houses less than half a mile away from the site of the start of this soundwalk. At the time of release, that housing development is nearing completion, with the total eradication of a meadow habitat essential to ground-nesting skylarks and other birdlife.
Additionally - simply for my own entertainment possibly - I wanted to present material evidence of me talking to myself; something I catch myself doing more and more these days.
My narrative is deliberately banal - factual descriptions of the landscape I was seeing ahead of me, around me or on the ground as I walked, along with the occasional brief interaction with other walkers. My intention was to produce a simple document. Sometimes there is the sound of a gate opening and closing. Despite passing a livery at the start of the walk, no horses were encountered this time, sadly.
Recorded January 2022.
