Autumn Leaves | Field Recording and Soundscape Compilation
Artwork:
|
 |
 |
| Autumn Leaves 1 | Autumn Leaves 2 | Autumn Leaves 3 |
1. Cut out printed area
2. Fold the two small rectangles so the print is on the outside
3. Fold the resulting large rectangle in the centre. The print should be on the outside
4. Put glue on the small rectangles
5. Glue small rectangles to folded half of the large rectangle to receive a cd sleeve
6. repeat 1 – 5 for the other two sleeves
CD-Download:
| Format: MP3 (320 Kbps) | Format: FLAC (lossless) |
| Autumn Leaves 1 (.zip) | Autumn Leaves 1 |
| Autumn Leaves 2 (.zip) | Autumn Leaves 2 |
| Autumn Leaves 3 (.zip) | Autumn Leaves 3 |
| All In One (.zip) | MP3 (320 Kbps) | All In One (.zip) | FLAC (lossless) |
Stream CD: All tracks (M3U)
Book:
| Autumn Leaves – Sound and Environment in Artistic Practice |
| CRISAP | Double-Entendre |
 |
 |
 |
Compilation curated by Angus Carlyle and Gruenrekorder 2007
Artwork by Tobias Schmitt – www.acrylnimbus.de
London (UK) | Frankfurt am Main (GER) | GrDl 088 | LC 09488
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Licence.
Reviews:
Idwal Fisher | IDWAL FISHER
Having not seen a cloud for a week it was a bit of a disappointment to land at Manchester Airport to find that every raincloud in the northern hemisphere had decided to have an outing in the north of England. Driving home in torrential rain over Saddleworth Moor, in an old car, with damp points, at a speed the Victorians would have considered cautious soon had me wondering if I’d hallucinated the 35C heat I’d felt on my skin only a few hours previously.
For our yearly trip to the sunny isle I took with me, for the benefit of my edification, Simon Reynold’s new book ‘Retromania’ and the recent translation of Gunter Grass’s ‘The Tin Drum’ [a book I’d read in my teens and one I’ve been wanting to revisit for a while now]. The recent R4 adaptation of James Joyce’s Ulysses was on the ipod as was Robert Wyatt’s 1997 release ‘Shleep’ an album I’ve been curiously drawn to of late. Has luck would have it appeared in one of those most serendipitous moments courtesy of the shuffle function whilst crossing the waters from Corfu to Paxos all tired and warm and undulating and with a great feeling of knowing that in the not too distant future I‘d be sat outside a welcoming taverna with a well chilled liter of wine to go at.
At home the week previous the idea struck me that it would be a good idea to take some Gruenrekorder along with me. The long, listless afternoons are perfect for soaking up field recording vibes and so it proved. My only problem was that without a serious pair of noise cancelation headphones I discovered that the outside world found a way of creeping in on my own preferred Gruenrekorder one. With these outside sounds consisting of nothing more than cicadas and the odd passing vehicle it wasn’t as if I was competing with a radio pumping rebetika and a neighbor blaring eurotrash through a bust up stereo.
Cicadas are all over Rodolphe Alexis’s ‘Sempervirent’, at least they sound like cicadas. After spending what must have been two uncomfortable months with a quadraphonic parabolic recorder in the heart of the Costa Rican jungle Rodolphie returned to appear with 55 minutes worth here and an installation called ‘Dry, Wet, Evergreen’ which I think showed in France earlier this year. Consisting of a series of ‘sequence shots’, where Alexis edits his quad recordings down to stereo [and on track five mixes in some amphibian sounds with the aid of a hydrophone] Sempervirent proves to be an extraordinary listen. Even whilst indulging on I-suppose-it’ll-have-to-do MP3 the vibrant sounds of the indigenous wildlife burst into my shell-likes with an ability to transport me from the dusty olive groves of Paxos to the lush interiors of the Costa Rican jungle. Everything from birds, to monkeys to frogs and insects are captured, as are Alexi’s own footsteps and the sound of rain hitting a tin roof from where he shelters. Perhaps most remarkable of all is the sound of the mantled howler monkey declaring his presence to a new day with naught but a barely discernible hum of insects and the slowly awakening chatter of birds for company – a sound that goes to show that nature can delight the ears as much as any man-made sound – all this on track three, the longest on offer at 11 minutes and one that ends with a terrific thunderstorm. Listening to this through state of the art reproduction equipment must be an even more remarkable experience [just don’t ask me to go and hear all this first hand, I like my comfort too much].
Works like ‘Sempervirent’ [meaning verdant] not only show how diverse a wildlife we have in such places they act as markers for the future. With natural habitat disappearing at ever faster rates it’d be interesting to compare a recording made ten years hence with what Alexis has recorded here. Besides being incredible listening experience Sempervirent exists as hard evidence for naturalists and eco campaigners alike.
Field recordings made in jungles aren’t anything new of course, Gruenrekorder have further examples in their catalogue [and David Tudor even went so far as to create his own] but none on Autumn Leaves another release that tumbled in and out of my consciousness over a long hot week. Or maybe there was? I have to admit to having the odd nod whilst listening to these 33 tracks and three plus hours worth of sounds but what I heard I enjoyed – as I did the last Gruenrekorder comp that came this way [Playing With Words].
Here I reacquainted myself with Aki Onda, a Japanese artist resident in New York whose cassette recordings of the city form the basis of his ongoing ‘Cassette Memories’ project. I saw him last year at Colour Out Of Space in Brighton, one of the few highlights of the weekend – lots of bird sounds emerging from traffic, buskers, passing radios, something that John Levack Drever mirrors with his ‘Phonographies of Glasgow’. There’s a ten minute interview with Chris Watson and some amazing sounds from Finland where pebbles are thrown across a frozen lake. John Wynne’s track ‘Someone Else Has Died’ contains reminiscences of drug addicts matched to floating like synth sounds, a short work [an edit] that sounds remarkably similar in structure to the Delia Derbyshire/Barry Bermagne’s ‘Dream’ project for the BBC. Ethnography and field recordings sit comfortably over of aural entertainment and its all free. A perfect gateway to Gruenrekorder land.
Tobias Fischer | tokafi
Net Feature/ V.A.: Autumn Leaves
Explains the allure of the phonographic phenomenon: Possibly the largest coherent collection of pure field recordings and associated styles.
The phonography scene is small and fragmented, yet ambitious and international – all factors which make it simultaneously hard and easy to keep up with developments. Ever since it was founded, Gruenrekorder has attempted to be more than just a label and turned into a hub for field recording-related issues and projects. They therefore seemed like an obvious choice for Angus Carlyle as curators for the audio part of his „Autumn Leaves“ compendium.
„Autumn Leaves“, in itself, was already an important step. Collecting articles and essays from a slew of experts, journalists and fans, it tried explaining the allure of the phonographic phenomenon and provided valuable food for thought for newbies and insiders alike. Originally, the concept of the book included two discs‘ worth of music to exemplify the thoughts and insights of the texts, but for various reasons, the music ended up in an online-only free-to-download format. That, of course, is not the worst of solutions.
With a total of 32 tracks, after all, „Autumn Leaves“ is now possibly the largest coherent collection of pure field recordings and associated styles and it is out there to be discovered for anyone seeking enlightenment on the topic. While many phonography-samplers tend to focus at a particular and consciously restricted area, Gruenrekorder has managed to provide a general perspective: There is even a lengthy excerpt of an interview with Chris Watson included in the track list, in which the wildlife- and bird-recording specialist speaks out about his former antipathy against certain sounds of modern life.
The conversation is one of the definite recommendations on a compilation with many highlights. Former radio journalist Els Viaene, for example, who conducted the interview, has contributed a dronescape based on on-site tapings at a small train station in Laken in Brussels, in which echoes of the field recordings are counterpointed and juxtaposed by rhythmic passages and mellow ambiances. And Christina Kubisch, one of Germany’s most experienced and longest-standing sound artists, delivers a track which contrasts birdsong and sounds of nature with overlapping spoken word phrases.
The pure phonography department is represented by the first third of „Autumn Leaves“, in which the crystal-clear „Chernobyl“-scenes by Peter Cusack, Yannick Dauby’s peaceful „Kuan Yun“ and Jez Riley French’s crackling „Church Door and Window“ are both skilfully crafted and full of emotional resonance. While a longing for beauty is inherent to all these pieces, their apparent differences in recording technology also provide ample leverage for insightful comparisons.
„Autumn Leaves“, of course, does not end the patchwork character of the scene, but it does provide perspectives for the genre which could lead it out of its drastic niche existence. Field Recordings have by now turned into an integral part of every form of experimental music, offering tangents with a plethora of other styles and artist communities. Some of these parallels have become threedimensional thanks to this compilation, which is as important as it is enjoyable.
John F. Barber | Digital Technology and Culture / Washington State University Vancouver
The paucity of language to describe acoustic phenomena is noted immediately in the introduction to Autumn Leaves: Sound and the Environment in Artistic Practice. This slipperiness of language as a reflection of the richness of sound in space is preferred, says editor Angus Carlyle, and, as played out through the essays in this collection, becomes a celebration of „the complexity of sound’s movements to and fro and of the wonders of our ears and minds“ (5).
The celebration is rich and wonderful as composers, artists, and engineers discuss projects and performances designed to capture or create the movement of sound through a conductive medium, whether solid, gaseous, or liquid, so as to extend its vitality and extend its meanings.
Autumn Leaves then is a book about creative practices, drawn from diverse perspectives—from anthropology, acoustics, architecture, and beyond—all in conversation with each other about how sound encounters space and how that encounter can be made visible, legible, and audible.
For example, „New York Society For Acoustic Ecology“ describes The NYSoundmap Project (www.nysoundmap.org), an historical record and subjective presentation of the city’s shifting sonic environment and temporal, physical, and cultural contexts.
One aspect of the project is “Sound-Seeker” (www.soundseeker.org), a Google map-based interface for listening to the sounds of New York. Clicking icons on a map plays the recorded sound, and shows the address, date, time of day, author, and other information regarding the recording.
“City in a Sidewalk” (www.cityinasidewalk.org), another component of the same project, invites participants to navigate a provided soundwalk, or create one of their own. Using an online forum, participants can exchange personal narratives, photographs, drawings, sound recordings, environmental data, historical details, maps, and other information about their walks.
„Sound, Art, and Architecture,“ by Rhama Khazam, describes how music and sound art are inspiring architects seeking to incorporate time-based practices in their work. In the face of formatted behavioral patterns engendered by globalization, „artwork intended for universal and immediate consumption is giving way to the experience that unfolds over time, predicated on the public’s willingness to attend and participate“ (66).
The essays, interviews, and artworks collected in Autumn Leaves provide a wide-range of international voices and visions. The new translations of the 100 Japanese Soundscapes and 100 Finnish Soundscapes projects also extend the book’s reach.
Autumn Leaves is accompanied by an audio compilation from the book’s contributors, released through Gruenrekorder that can be freely downloaded, including CD cover, at (www.gruenrekorder.de).
Darby Mullins | DARBY’S CHRONICS
„In your land, there are no spirits. In mine, there are. That’s why it’s hard !“ Savelij Vasilev, Evenk shaman
This world grows farther from us, we are more and more insensible to manifestations of vital forces of Nature, those which animate living beings, as the natural elements such stones or wind, those that make a singing frog can still hear in a pool of Chernobyl, or something like that … The idea of capturing these kind of events is found in the practice of field recording (as in photography), a certain mindset impressionist ???
Autumn Leaves, compilation in three volumes (high definition), makes us reconsider the two holes we have on each side of the skull, to get the idea of a symbiosis between the different vibrations (environmental, physical, cosmic), to practice the idea of an auditory digestion (cause what goes in must go out). Happy listening.