First published Inpress (Issue # 1192), Melbourne on 21 September 2011, and in Drum Media (Issue # 1078), Sydney on 20 September 2011
NB: Each column has a name, but these do not appear in print; printed versions may differ slightly to those displayed here
The tagline of the original Alien film was 'In space no one can hear you scream'. In London it often feels that there’s no place you can get far enough away from people to scream. While you may have difficulty finding a private space to vent your bottled-up frustrations without being overheard, the flip to this is the worry that if you did cry out for assistance, seemingly no-one would heed your call. The capital is so densely populated that it’s hard to find respite, and recent studies show that it will only get worse in the future. The Royal Institute of British Architects found that many newly built or converted properties are too small for comfortable living, with one bedroom properties being 4 square metres smaller than the recommended minimum, barely leaving room to navigate around a single bed.
The shared walls of terraced housing mean you hear the neighbour’s washing machine rumbling late into the night, and even the sounds of their toilet roll spinning in its holder. Yet the great advantage of terraces is the quiet solitude created by the square itself to be enjoyed in back rooms (except when your neighbour decides that 8am on a Saturday morning is the ideal time to mow that lawn). Outside the home it’s harder to find peace, especially now that public transport has decided to talk to us. Being informed that “This is a number 38 bus to Victorian” (sic) at every stop makes bus journeys seem longer than ever, something that can only be made worse by the near unavoidable low-fi sodcasting from mobile phones. The only solution is to plug in your own headphones to drown out the background, so your brain only has one distraction to ignore.
One of the pleasant side effects of the volcanic eruptions in Iceland was the silence that that fell over the country as a result of the closure of UK airspace. In south east London, residents who lived under the Heathrow flight path could hear themselves think for first time in many years, the absence of modern sounds proving to be a rare treat. Something that is more common on the medieval byways of car-free Italian cities such as Venice or more especially Siena, where it’s still possible to be lost in time, the quiet streets allowing the sounds of history to seep through. In the City of London you can sometimes experience similar feelings on weekends, walking the narrow lanes off Cheapside within the sound of Bow Bells, but these prove fleeting.
This past weekend has seen the 19th annual Open House event, wherein various usually inaccessible buildings open to the general public for a few hours providing a rare opportunity to see both new architecture and glimpse into a hidden past. It’s often said that smell is the sense that is most deeply tied into memory, but there are many times that a song or a piece of music takes you back to a particular time or place, or maybe just the memory of a person, perhaps now lost. But a group of scientists are currently delving into the world of archaeoacoustics, so it may soon be possible to hear how things used to be, as well as see and smell them. This was the subject of a fascinating documentary broadcast on BBC Radio 4 last week. In Hearing the Past Professor Jim Al-Khalili looked at the pioneering work by a diverse group of scientists, engineers and artists, led by staff of the Department of Electronics at the University of York. Dr Damian Murphy sought to recreate what the sound of choral music would have been in Coventry Cathedral before it was destroyed in a bombing raid in 1940. Using an anechoic chamber and some advanced computing, the results were astounding.
Now others have taken this technology and used it to replicate how ceremonies may have sounded at Stonehenge 4000 years ago, without the rumble of traffic from a nearby A road. The documentary reported that the site develops a resonant bass rumble that it compared to a Depeche Mode synth sound. Using studios to create certain acoustic environments is nothing new, nor is electronically altering sounds once they are recorded. When Peter Gabriel released Plays Live in 1983, the liner notes made clear that the original live recordings had been tinkered with before release, honestly admitting that “the generic term of this process is ‘cheating’." I wonder how long before this new technology is used by artists to create ‘live’ recordings in locations they’ve never even visited?
© James McGalliard 2011
Inpress: Published on page 52Drum: Published on page 54
