Wednesday 17 June 2009

interview with Isobel Clouter & Rob Mullender

late last year and/oar released the cd 'myths of origin' by Isobel Clouter & Rob Mullender:




At long last, after a culmination of delays amounting to 3 years,
and/OAR is extremely happy to finally present a full length release
featuring "singing sand" and "booming sand" recorded in Japan and
Mongolia by British sound artists Isobel Clouter and Rob Mullender.
"Singing sand", "booming sand", "whistling sand" or "barking sand"
is sand that produces sounds of either high or low frequency under
pressure. The sound emission is usually triggered by wind passing
over dunes or by walking on the sand.

Also featured are field recordings of a traditional Japanese Sawara
Matsuri festival, a Suikinkutsu (underground water zither), Uguisubari
(or Nightengale floor), Chion-in temple and Saiho-ji temple .

The recordings came about as a result of a project instigated in late
1999, which bears witness to a long held fascination with how the
environment generates and shapes culture, memory and myth. There
was no desire to conduct any scientific or anthropological field work,
but to collect a set of recordings which would serve to illustrate how
precious the sonic environment can be, and to act as founding
materials for a soundscape collection at the British Library Sound
Archive.

Track listing:
1. Sawara matsuri, Singing sand, Suikinkutsu
2. Kotohiki-hama - Kotoga-hama beaches
3. Chion-in temple, Nightingale floor, Saiho-ji temple
4. Dune ascent / descent
5. Aosigetunoer descent
6. Baoritaolegainuoer Natural Booming
7. Baoritaolegainuoer descent
8. Dune 3 descent
9. Tibetan Prayer wheels, Xiahe

The audio CD also features a PDF of extra photos pertaining to the
recordings that can be accessed on a computer, and comes
packaged in a four color digipak and a 12 page booklet.

This CD is dedicated to the memory of Professor Shigeo Miwa, whose
warm generosity and enthusiasm was invaluable to the success of
this recording project, and whose work is mentioned in an interesting
article about booming sand and the environment, a PDF of which can
be found here .



over the past few months I have been sending questions to Isobel & Rob as part of and/oar's on going interview series. You can read the full article here.

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