‘Quiet, Please’ is an 80mm CDr release, documenting the degeneration of society’s sonic landscape through location recordings, tape-loops and double bass.
A lo-fi recording of some whispering in the library.
At first it was somewhat irritating having these flurries of soft voices chattering behind me; but once I focused in on the sound I heard an almost bird-like conversation of short sung rhythms and melodies of whispering. I have no idea who they are or what they’re talking about but I love the frenetic transient points of words being pronounced. I guess its a mix of emotions in the voice and the inflection of accents/pronunciation at lower volumes.
I only wish I’d been able to record a little clearer at the time.
Libraries are surreal places. Yesturday I began recording a new piece based in one.
Its a series of location recordings of the Leeds University Brotherton Library. Located in the Parkinson building (a grade-II listed-building, completed in 1951), the main reading room of the Library is a circular hall, with a domed ceiling. My interest in this room of the library (in addition to it bearing a striking resembalence to scenes in Ghostbusters) is that sounds within the hall are amplified and reverberated in the extreme. The result is a library, which when occupied, is often anything but silent.
More information about the piece as I develop it over the next few days.
Below are some dodgy iPhone shots of Atlases that caught my eye while recording:
