Sound map recording: Roadside snack bar Battersea
Where: Queenstown Road approach to Battersea Bridge. Description: Voice of snack bar owner and sounds of food being cooked, traffic. Recordist: IM Rawes. Duration: 1:42.
Sound map recording: Atlantic Road Brixton
Where: Brixton station stairway above Atlantic Road. Description: Voices of people passing below, occasional vehicles, fainter shouts and traffic from Brixton Road. Recordist: IM Rawes. Duration: 1:42.
Sound map recording: Grand Union Canal Kensal Green
Where: By the Grand Union Canal opposite Kensal Green cemetery. Description: birdsong from trees and calls of ducks, faint traffic. Recordist: IM Rawes. Duration: 1:34.
Sound map recording: Kew Gardens conservatory
Where: Kew Gardens main conservatory. Description: Loud hissing of plant mister then water dripping onto leaves all around. Recordist: IM Rawes. Duration: 1:08
Sound map recording: Old Oak Common sidings
Where: Footpath north of Old Oak Common railway sidings, west London. Description: Factory noise and clattering of railway maintenance vehicle. Recordist: IM Rawes. Duration: 1:14.
Blog post: Rituals of public shaming
Twenty years ago or more you might have occasionally heard the word ‘sherricking’, as in ‘she gave him a right good sherricking’. It referred to a woman giving her husband or boyfriend a public and relentless dressing-down for his various failings. [. . .]
Sound map recording: 21st floor Balfron Tower
Where: 21st floor balcony, Balfron Tower, Poplar. Description: Constant traffic noise from the Isle of Dogs to the south, a police siren, faint aircraft noise, a dog barks. Recordist: IM Rawes. Duration: 1:00.
Sound action recording: St Paul's bells
Category: Officialdom - Nonverbal signals. Description: The bells of St Paul's Cathedral sound at 1:00pm, recorded from the garden adjacent to the south entrance. Recordist: Ben Cripps. Duration: 0:33.
Blog post: Notting Hill Carnival 1984
Cameron McNall from Los Angeles has very kindly uploaded some recordings of his made in London back in 1984 [. . .]
Sound action recording: Island jam session Notting Hill Carnival 1984
Category: Social - Notting Hill Carnival 1984. Description: Musicians jam in a small park near the Carnival. Recordist: Cameron McNall. Duration: 13:04.
Sound action recording: Reggae DJ Notting Hill Carnival 1984
Category: Social - Notting Hill Carnival 1984. Description: A lone DJ plays music in the street. Recordist: Cameron McNall. Duration: 2:36.
Sound action recording: Chelsea vs Liverpool 1984
Category: Social - Football. Description: Cheering, chanting and applause among Chelsea fans as their team plays Liverpool. Recordist: Cameron McNall. Duration: 2:40.
Sound map recording: Notting Hill pub 1984
Where: Inside a pub near the Notting Hill Carnival area. Description: Pub ambience with a group of men discussing buying football tickets. Recordist: Cameron McNall. Duration: 0:55.
Blog post: Binaural sounds from Russia
After highlighting the recent surge in site visitors from Russia, a welcome email arrived from Vladimir of Sergiyev Posad, which is a town some forty miles north of Moscow. [. . .]
Blog post: Night-walking and the poet of Villiers Street
One of the two reasons why the London Sound Survey doesn’t have search boxes is that they close off the possibility of serendipitous discovery. The other reason is I don’t know how to do them. [. . .]
Sound action recording: Villiers Street poet busker 2
Category: Economic - Street entertainers. Description: The Villiers Street poet recites a second poem, entitled 'It's a long day, lady'. Recordist: IM Rawes. Duration: 0:38.
Sound action recording: Villiers Street poet busker 1
Category: Economic - Street entertainers. Description: A busking poet with a pitch in Villiers Street recites a poem entitled 'A London Ode'. Recordist: IM Rawes. Duration: 1:07.
Sound action recording: Violin busker Villiers Street
Category: Economic - Street entertainers. Description: A busking violinist plays on a Saturday night in Villiers Street, central London. Recordist: IM Rawes. Duration: 1:45.
Sound grid recording: TQ 4023 9205
Where: Woodford Green near Snakes Lane West. Description: Loud traffic noise, faint birdsong and voices of dog-walkers. Recordist: IM Rawes. Duration: 1:00.
Sound map recording: Atlas pub closing time
Where: Seagrave Road, West Brompton. Description: People spill out of the Atlas pub into the street, talking and hailing taxis. Recordist: IM Rawes. Duration: 1:00.
Sound map recording: Fulham Broadway tube
Where: Outside Fulham Broadway Underground station. Description: Night-time revellers laugh and chatter as they gather outside the station. Recordist: IM Rawes. Duration: 1:00.
Blog post: Sound is Art
Margaret Noble, a US-based electronic musician, runs a blog called Sound is Art which presents a range of fascinating and unusual sound recordings. [. . .]
Blog post: Hello and welcome, Russian listeners
Server logs show around 15,000 unique visitors so far this month, with a fair proportion of those coming from Russia. [. . .]
Blog post: Crowds and crime in Defoe's 'Moll Flanders'
Daniel Defoe was a restless and energetic writer who produced over 270 books and pamphlets from the late 1690s to just before his death in 1731. [. . .]
Sound action recording: St Alban the Martyr bell
Category: Religious - Calls to worship. Description: The bell of St Alban the Martyr, parish church for Holborn, tolls for Mass on a Friday. Recordist: Ben Cripps. Duration: 1:00.
Sound grid recording: TQ 3231 9963
Where: Whitewebbs Wood, Crews Hill. Description: Constant traffic noise from Whitewebbs Road and the M25 to the north. Birdsong, voices of dog walkers, aircraft drone towards the end. Recordist: IM Rawes. Duration: 1:00.
Sound map recording: Whitewebbs brook
Where: Whitewebbs Wood, Crews Hill. Description: Recorded while kneeling beside a small brook. The brook was swollen by recent rain. Recordist: IM Rawes. Duration: 1:00.
Sound map recording: Roadside snack bar Surrey Row
Where: Junction of Surrey Row and Great Suffolk Street. Description: The snack bar owner hands over some change, an egg fries in a pan, chinks from pots and pans, traffic, a train passes along the nearby viaduct. Recordist: IM Rawes. Duration: 1:06.
Blog post: Weird Vibrations and the politics of sound
Some recommendations for other sound-related websites are long overdue, and there’s no better one to begin with than Ben Tausig’s Weird Vibrations blog. [. . .]
Sound map recording: Asda Old Kent Road
Where: Asda supermarket, Old Kent Road, south London. Description: Loud humming and fainter rattling from chiller cabinets next to the queue for the cigarettes-and-scratchcards counter. Recordist: IM Rawes. Duration: 1:00.
Blog post: Two warm and sunny afternoons in south London
A sound-walk is where the recording is made on the go, rather than in a single location. It’s easy to make one so long as you pay attention to your breathing and don’t wear clothes that rustle or creak as you move. [. . .]
Sound map recording: Brixton afternoon
Where: central Brixton, south London. Description: Market and crowd sounds recorded while walking through central Brixton on a Saturday afternoon. Recordist: IM Rawes. Duration: 6:34.
Blog post: Voices of animals and men
Following on from an earlier post about budgerigars, I was listening recently to this CD produced by the British Library Sound Archive [. . .]
Sound map recording: Rye Lane Peckham
Where: Walking south along Rye Lane from Peckham Rye station. Description: Weekday late afternoon on Rye Lane. A busker plays a guitar in the station, sounds of street cleaning vehicle, traffic, butcher's cleaver hitting a wooden block, music from shops, and passersby. Recordist: IM Rawes. Duration: 4:42.
Blog post: Gone to the dogs
Greyhound racing, like speedway, was once a mass spectator sport in London. Today the only races left are held at Wimbledon and Romford, the latter being technically in London but spiritually in Essex. [. . .]
Sound map recording: At St Pancras International
Where: St Pancras station. Description: .A train leaves from the First Capital Connect platforms for Bedford and then various announcements are heard. Recordist: Ben Cripps. Duration: 1:22.
Sound action recording: Ice cream van January
Category: Economic - Newspaper and other street sellers. Description: An ice cream van prowls the streets of south-east London while sounding its chime. Recordist: IM Rawes. Duration: 0:28.
Blog post: Wishing you all a happy 2010
The London Sound Survey has now been online for seven months. In that time, the number of recordings has nearly doubled to around 450. [. . .]
Sound action recording: Rickmansworth steam engine whistle
Category: Officialdom - Nonverbal signals. Description: A steam engine approaches and sounds its whistle as it travels from Rickmansworth. Recordist: Ben Cripps. Duration: 0:40.
Blog post: Toothache hotel
I had been meaning to record the sounds of hospital environments for a while, but somehow never got round to it. [. . .]
