Excellent essay on “The Power of Voice” by Siobhan McHugh. She shares a devastating tape-recording of Jan Graham, an Australian woman who reported the Vietnam War:
She wept as she told of finding the mutilated body of her lover, a Green Beret on surveillance with the US army. I offered to stop the tape, but she wanted to be purged of all the memories, and the worst was yet to come. Have a listen to the three minutes of tape here. It’s barely been edited, apart from where I shortened some of the pauses, as her grief was just unbearable:”
Yet another WFMU find; blogger Tony Coulter describes this record as:
A single offering up audio-verite recordings made in a Scottish bingo parlor. Despite being completely unmanipulated, the A-side, which you’ll find below, serves quite well as sound art, no?
From the liner notes:
Day by day, Angela McColloch, the Glaswedian Bingo hostess, reads her colours and numbers to the ambient melodies of the big buck$ slot machines… for hours at a time.
A new sound symphony by Jana Winderen artist/recordist is out on Touch Music. She calls her album Energy Field. Here’s a sample (5:20):
Armed with four 8011 DPA hydrophones, DPA 4060 omni mics, a Telinga parabolic reflector mic and and a Sound Devices 744T digital hard disk recorder, Jana Winderen studies and records wild places which have a particular importance in our understanding of the complexity and fragility of marine ecosystems.
The recordings were made on field trips to the Barents Sea (north of Norway and Russia), Greenland and Norway, deep in crevasses of glaciers, in fjords and in the open ocean. These elements are then edited and layered into a powerful descriptive soundscape. The open spaces of Greenland, northern winds, ravens and dogs in an icy landscape provide the setting for these haunting but dynamic pieces. Sounds of crustaceans, fish such as cod, haddock, herring and pollock recorded as they are hunting, calling for a mate or orientating themselves in their environment, are all included in the mix.
From her artist statement:
I have been occupied with finding sounds from unseen sources of sound, like blind field recordings. Over the last three years I have collected recordings made by hydrophones, from rivers, shores and the ocean, and more recently also from glaciers in Greenland, Iceland and Norway. In the depths of the oceans there are invisible but audible soundscapes, about which we are largely ignorant, even if the oceans cover 70% of our planet.
The radio program Interfaith Voices has a new series of sacred sonic features called The Soundscapes of Faith. There’s a shofar, shape singers, Sikh hymns, and several more.
Check this Islamic prayer, with elaborations by Akbar Ahmed, chair of Islamic studies at American University (2:34):
One of the most beautiful sounds of Islam is the call to prayer, or adhan. It rings out in many Muslin countries 5 times a day, asking believers to pause their day and remember God.
Sophie Rouys is a conservation biologist and heads up the Kagu Recovery Plan for New Caledonia; she recorded some really close up calls one morning in the park at Riviere Bleue. They call, usually in groups, for anywhere between 5 minutes and an hour at dawn. They’re pretty silent the rest of the time, except for clucking sounds when male and female switch off at the nest and the occasional display.
Right Here, Right Now is an evening with sound-artist Aaron Ximm (aka, quiet american), Oct 29 at the Headlands Center for the Arts (Sausalito, CA):
2009 AIR Aaron Ximm creates intimate, site-specific sound installations that translate fleeting moments captured by field recordings into present experiences.
He’ll also present 24 channels of sound Oct 18 at HeadlandsFall Open House.
As paredes têm ouvidos (“The walls are listeningâ€) Aaron Ximm’s 2007 site-specific sound installation, Lisbon, Portugal
“As Parades Tem Ouvidos – Nature (Collage C)” recordings made within the walls of Nodar, on the theme of nature sounds (6:17 mp3):
A new sound symphony by Jana Winderen artist/recordist is out on Touch Music. She calls her album 
The radio program Interfaith Voices has a new series of sacred sonic features called 
