This split release features field recording works from sound artists Tom Wallace and Graham Dunning, who have both presented recordings at the ongoing Earshots concert series. These two artists have each taken a contrasting approach to the idea of field recording as a work that can be presented to a live audience. This release captures each artist’s unique method of playback.
On the A side, Tom Wallace presents six forest recordings taken in South East Asia sampling a number of acoustic landscapes at different times of the day, from dawn until dusk, and into the night. On the B side, Graham Dunning performs a DJ set using dubplates that he has produced with field recordings of the local urban environment and its people; this set was recorded live on four microphones at Corsica Studios, London, in March 2016
Tom Wallace
“These 6 recordings are from my travels in South East Asia over recent years. While hiking in protected forest areas I was often struck by the proximity of the soundscape with that of the experimental electronic music scene in my home city of London. I have attempted to capture some of these sounds. Each track is made up of one or more recordings but these are always from the same location and time. I have segued various recordings together purely to show the diversity in these locations.”
Tom Wallace’s work is primarily in the acousmatic & radio mediums. Multimedia work has included sound design for the architects Foster and Partners. From 1998 he has collaborated with director Peter Reder on ‘City of Dreams,’ a theatre piece staged in London, Singapore, Brisbane & Bremen & more recently for Vancouver’s PuSH festival in 2011. Working with the London Musician’s Collective he helped set up Resonance104.4FM the UK’s first radio art station in 2002. He has contributed various shows seeking to redefine radio and incorporate other wireless technologies with the radio show ‘London Wireless Soundscape Project.’ As ‘DJ Wrongspeed’ he produced the controversial FM speed-reading ‘Pirate Flava’ show. As a DJ he ran the long running ‘Vinyl Pleasures’ night at London’s Foundry bar.
Graham Dunning
“I favour recordings of mundane or prosaic soundscapes, recontextualised to draw attention to the layers, textures and intricacies present in the sounds of day-to-day life. The dubplates I use carry their own stories, battlescars from past usage, which come to the fore in clicks, pops, crackle and hiss. This extra layer of texture is something I encourage, blurring the distinction between figure and ground.
The recording for the cassette is an absurd, abstract sound collage performed for an empty dance floor. I chose Corsica Studios in which to make the recording as a keystone of London’s innovative club scene with a unique character, based inside two railway arches in the strange urban infrastructure of Elephant & Castle. The hum of the laser-lighting’s cooling fans and the punctuating rumbles from trains passing overhead add further layers of sound to the piece.
In making the recording I followed the flow of the sounds present, imposing sounds from other spaces, improvising translations and overlays. The listener inhabits several real and imagined spaces simultaneously, including their chosen listening environment and hiss from the cassette tape.
Nightclubs are places where time can be inverted. Clock-time becomes irrelevant and duration is measured in flows, shifting blocks of affect. Using an empty nightclub, records without music and exposed unwanted noises I wanted to take an imprint or residual negative. Ghosts dissolving into the dancefloor, from dawn till dusk.”
