Lead moving sound
Aug 15, 2022, 08:05 AM
Composition by Owen Vince.
"‘Lead moving sound’ makes use of a sound from the Obsolete Sounds archive – a rapid plastic shuffling of a cassette’s spools being wound. With the composition, I processed the sound; stretching and slowing its duration. I was interested in drawing out the mechanical gears and teeth that make up the cassette – exploring both its fragility and its hardiness.
"In the composition, I imagined the music that this ‘imagined’ cassette might hold – using a mixture of processed, slowed-down samples that I’d earlier recorded while browsing the internet (Japanese pop music; advertising), in addition to my own body (moving in my chair; breathing; typing; rubbing a piece of paper in my hand).
"I thought about the cassette as a kind of archive of its own, a blank box that soaks up the incidental ‘music’ of everyday life. Slowed down, processed, the cassette winding became a kind of heavy clanking, as if pieces of wood and stone were being moved around. Foregrounding its physicality, and the physicality required to use and play this ‘obsolete’ technology (to insert a tape; to press the chunky play buttons; to wind the spool)."
This is part of the Obsolete Sounds project, the world’s biggest collection of disappearing sounds and sounds that have become extinct – remixed and reimagined to create a brand new form of listening. Explore the whole project at https://citiesandmemory.com/obsolete-sounds
"‘Lead moving sound’ makes use of a sound from the Obsolete Sounds archive – a rapid plastic shuffling of a cassette’s spools being wound. With the composition, I processed the sound; stretching and slowing its duration. I was interested in drawing out the mechanical gears and teeth that make up the cassette – exploring both its fragility and its hardiness.
"In the composition, I imagined the music that this ‘imagined’ cassette might hold – using a mixture of processed, slowed-down samples that I’d earlier recorded while browsing the internet (Japanese pop music; advertising), in addition to my own body (moving in my chair; breathing; typing; rubbing a piece of paper in my hand).
"I thought about the cassette as a kind of archive of its own, a blank box that soaks up the incidental ‘music’ of everyday life. Slowed down, processed, the cassette winding became a kind of heavy clanking, as if pieces of wood and stone were being moved around. Foregrounding its physicality, and the physicality required to use and play this ‘obsolete’ technology (to insert a tape; to press the chunky play buttons; to wind the spool)."
This is part of the Obsolete Sounds project, the world’s biggest collection of disappearing sounds and sounds that have become extinct – remixed and reimagined to create a brand new form of listening. Explore the whole project at https://citiesandmemory.com/obsolete-sounds