LONDON SOUND SURVEY BLOG

Occasional posts on subjects like field recording, London sounds past and present, other websites worth looking at, articles in the press, and news of audio-related events.

Sounds unreal

Posted by IMR on 30 July 2010

BAD NEWS FOR foley artists in this New Scientist article on advances in computer synthesis of real-world sounds.

For a few years now, even mid-priced animation packages have come bundled with physics modules to simulate collisions, fluid dynamics, wobbling jelly-like objects and rag-doll kinematics. But, according to the article, the sounds that would result from them can now be rendered as well:

Two teams of US-based computer modellers will unveil acoustically enabled animation software that can compute sound effects by harnessing the same physics used to render the animations. Automating the generation of sound effects should make it cheaper to produce video games, ads and movies.

Here’s an accompaying video:


It’s hard to imagine a whole street full of sounds being rendered. Then again, compare the state of computer animation in a 1992 film like The Lawnmower Man with the CGI sequences routinely churned out today. (Thanks to Nick Hamilton of Lost Steps for the heads-up.)

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Jack London among the Cockneys

Posted by IMR on 23 July 2010

THE MAN WHO had spoken to him was clearly a Cockney, with the clean lines and weakly pretty, almost effeminate, face of the man who has absorbed the sound of Bow Bells with his mother’s milk . . . “An’ ’ow yer feelin’ now, sir?” he asked, with the subservient smirk which comes only of generations of tip-seeking ancestors . . . I never heard a voice I hated so. Positively, he was the most disgusting and loathsome person I have ever met.

So the American writer Jack London described the ship’s cook in The Sea Wolf, published in 1904 and later made into a good film starring Edward G. Robinson.

London had taken a more sympathetic view of Cockneys the year before in The People of the Abyss, his social investigation of life and poverty in the East End. Like J.B.S. Haldane, London was an adventure-seeking alpha male who sided with the underdog. Unlike Haldane, London came from a poor working-class background, selling newspapers in the street at the age of ten before graduating to poaching oysters in San Francisco Bay.

The book is still lively and readable today, ageing much better than contemporary socialist tracts like Robert Blatchford’s Merrie England. London is an outsider in the East End, but more for reasons of nationality than class. He dons shabby clothes to stay in hostels and lodging-houses, and in one passage renders the sounds of a fight in such detail that you know he was fascinated by it:

As I write this, and for an hour past, the air has been made hideous by a free-for-all, rough-and-tumble fight going on in the yard that is back to back with my yard. When the first sounds reached me I took it for the barking and snarling of dogs, and some minutes were required to convince me that human beings, and women at that, could produce such a fearful clamour.

Drunken women fighting!  It is not nice to think of; it is far worse to listen to. Something like this it runs –

Incoherent babble, shrieked at the top of the lungs of several women; a lull, in which is heard a child crying and a young girl’s voice pleading tearfully; a woman’s voice rises, harsh and grating, “You ’it me!  Jest you ’it me!” then, swat! challenge accepted and fight rages afresh.

The back windows of the houses commanding the scene are lined with enthusiastic spectators, and the sound of blows, and of oaths that make one’s blood run cold, are borne to my ears. Happily, I cannot see the combatants.

A lull; “You let that child alone!” child, evidently of few years, screaming in downright terror. “Awright,” repeated insistently and at top pitch twenty times straight running; “you’ll git this rock on the ’ead!” and then rock evidently on the head from the shriek that goes up.

A lull; apparently one combatant temporarily disabled and being resuscitated; child’s voice audible again, but now sunk to a lower note of terror and growing exhaustion.

Voices begin to go up the scale, something like this:–

“Yes?”

“Yes!”

“Yes?”

“Yes!”

“Yes?”

“Yes!”

“Yes?”

“Yes!”

Sufficient affirmation on both sides, conflict again precipitated. One combatant gets overwhelming advantage, and follows it up from the way the other combatant screams bloody murder. Bloody murder gurgles and dies out, undoubtedly throttled by a strangle hold.

Entrance of new voices; a flank attack; strangle hold suddenly broken from the way bloody murder goes up half an octave higher than before; general hullaballoo, everybody fighting.

Lull; new voice, young girl’s, “I’m goin’ ter tyke my mother’s part;” dialogue, repeated about five times, “I’ll do as I like, blankety, blank, blank!”  “I’d like ter see yer, blankety, blank, blank!” renewed conflict, mothers, daughters, everybody, during which my landlady calls her young daughter in from the back steps, while I wonder what will be the effect of all that she has heard upon her moral fibre.

Many of the people London met assumed he was a seaman down on his luck. He seems able to befriend others quickly and easily, and here some workmen take him to visit their sweatshop:

In the adjoining room lived a woman and six children. In another vile hole lived a widow, with an only son of sixteen who was dying of consumption. The woman hawked sweetmeats on the street, I was told, and more often failed than not to supply her son with the three quarts of milk he daily required. Further, this son, weak and dying, did not taste meat oftener than once a week; and the kind and quality of this meat cannot possibly be imagined by people who have never watched human swine eat.

“The w’y ’e coughs is somethin’ terrible,” volunteered my sweated friend, referring to the dying boy.  “We ’ear ’im ’ere, w’ile we’re workin’, an’ it’s terrible, I say, terrible!”

Tuberculosis is a disease of overcrowding, and in recent years it’s begun to reappear in parts of Tower Hamlets. But in the early 1900s the sound of coughing was surely much more common, not only because of disease, but also the terrible air quality, dusty conditions in the workplace, and the popularity of smoking.

As Orwell was to do thirty years later in Down and Out in Paris and London, so London describes the noises of a night in a men’s hostel:

Many hours passed before I won to sleep. It was only seven in the evening, and the voices of children, in shrill outcry, playing in the street, continued till nearly midnight. The smell was frightful and sickening, while my imagination broke loose, and my skin crept and crawled till I was nearly frantic. Grunting, groaning, and snoring arose like the sounds emitted by some sea monster, and several times, afflicted by nightmare, one or another, by his shrieks and yells, aroused the lot of us. Toward morning I was awakened by a rat or some similar animal on my breast. In the quick transition from sleep to waking, before I was completely myself, I raised a shout to wake the dead. At any rate, I woke the living, and they cursed me roundly for my lack of manners.

At the coronation of Edward VII, London witnesses ‘another race of men from those of the shops and slums, a totally different race of men’, strong and well-fed and with overpowering force at their command. Compared to them the people of the abyss are runts, made so by a mismanaged civilisation.

But hark! There is cheering down Whitehall; the crowd sways, the double walls of soldiers come to attention, and into view swing the King’s watermen, in fantastic mediaeval garbs of red, for all the world like the van of a circus parade. [. . .] And now the Horse Guards, a glimpse of beautiful cream ponies, and a golden panoply, a hurricane of cheers, the crashing of bands – “The King! the King!  God save the King!” Everybody has gone mad. The contagion is sweeping me off my feet – I, too, want to shout, “The King!  God save the King!” Ragged men about me, tears in their eyes, are tossing up their hats and crying ecstatically, “Bless ’em!  Bless ’em!  Bless ’em!”  See, there he is, in that wondrous golden coach, the great crown flashing on his head, the woman in white beside him likewise crowned. [. . .]

Princes and princelings, dukes, duchesses, and all manner of coroneted folk of the royal train are flashing past; more warriors, and lackeys, and conquered peoples, and the pagent is over. I drift with the crowd out of the square into a tangle of narrow streets, where the public-houses are a-roar with drunkenness, men, women, and children mixed together in colossal debauch. And on every side is rising the favourite song of the Coronation:–

“Oh! on Coronation Day, on Coronation Day,
We’ll have a spree, a jubilee, and shout, Hip, hip, hooray,
For we’ll all be marry, drinking whisky, wine, and sherry,
We’ll all be merry on Coronation Day.”

The rain is pouring down. Up the street come troops of the auxiliaries, black Africans and yellow Asiatics, beturbaned and befezed, and coolies swinging along with machine guns and mountain batteries on their heads, and the bare feet of all, in quick rhythm, going slish, slish, slish through the pavement mud. The public-houses empty by magic, and the swarthy allegiants are cheered by their British brothers, who return at once to the carouse.

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Rebranding exercise

Posted by IMR on 22 July 2010

GOT FED UP with the old London Sound Survey masthead, finding that it was looking more odd over time, like when you say the same word over and over again until it sounds unfamiliar and meaningless.

The new font has the resonant name of Decorated 035 OT, and on the old Letraset sheets it was identified as Profil, sounding more elegant than it looked. But why that font?

It looks a little bit like the one used on the cover of a Jam album . . .


. . . and it appears on the sign of a shop in Kingsland High Road, which maybe sells wigs. Also, in an earlier life working for a printers, I used to see it every month or so among the camera-ready artwork for a police staff newspaper.

A regular strip of feeble one-panel cartoons had the single word HUMOUR hanging over it like a grand piano waiting to fall on someone. As for the font – well, you get the idea. Irony? No, not really.

Do also note the array of shiny-looking social media buttons to the right and have a go at clicking on them. Come on, help me out here.

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A Tottenham soundwalk

Posted by IMR on 20 July 2010

SUNDAY JUST GONE involved giving a brief talk at the new Sound Fjord sound art gallery in Seven Sisters, followed by a soundwalk which they’d organised up to Tottenham Marshes.

Helen and Andy, who run Sound Fjord, couldn’t have been more welcoming, and it was great meeting the friendly bunch of people who turned up for the day. Previously I’d found the typical sounds of Seven Sisters to be along the lines of Alright boss, you got a spare cigarette? But on that day the sun was shining and the area had a more wholesome complexion.

A recent sound development in London is the growing number of West African churches opening in all kinds of unhallowed premises. One on the Old Kent Road even has a nightclub at the back, so that’s body and spirit taken care of. Seven Sisters has its own complement, and we could hear music, song and amplified preaching from a cluster of churches at the junction of Lawrence Road and West Green Road.

North of Tottenham Hale, a path dives down alongside and under the Watermead Way dual carriageway. Here was a neglected void beneath the road which commerce and officialdom had found no use for; a dry place of twigs and birdshit:


Sound Fjord had arranged for members of the Friends of Tottenham Marshes to meet us, including the wildlife recordist David Chapman and an older man whose name I didn’t catch, but who had a relaxed, senatorial bearing and a great deal of knowledge of birdsong. A short distance from their meeting hall, lads were shouting and diving into the waters of Stonebridge Lock.

A woman steered her barge into the lock, then got out and began to turn the winding gear with a windlass to open the lock gates. Everyone around turned to see where the loud squealing was coming from; surprisingly intense and unpleasant at first, then sounding a bit like John Cale’s electric viola:


This was a very enjoyable day out and a good omen for the future success of Sound Fjord.

A week or so earlier I’d visited Seven Sisters and made a recording inside the Seven Sisters indoor market. A recent court ruling had blocked this from being redeveloped into the usual ‘luxury’ flats.

It consists of shop premises which have been given over to a maze of tiny booths, stalls and cafes. Every other little enterprise in there provides its own soundtrack through conversation and music from radios and hi-fis:


Like the West African churches, the Seven Sisters indoor market is fairly recent addition to London’s auditory scene. It caters to a mainly South American clientele, as do other indoor markets in Peckham and the Elephant and Castle. The longer-established Asian-run bazaars in Southall are on much the same scale, and for gadget geeks there are a couple near the St Giles’ Circus end of Tottenham Court Road.

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Doing anything on World Listening Day?

Posted by IMR on 12 July 2010

THIS COMING SUNDAY, the 18th of July, marks the first World Listening Day. Okay, there’s been a rash of commemorative and consciousness-raising dates recently and I feel drawn to the idea of National Bed Month at least, but World Listening Day ought to appeal to field recordists everywhere.

On their press release, the World Listening Project list some ways in which the Day can be acknowledged, such as organising soundwalks or performance events. I was stuck for something to do until Helen Frosi of London’s new sound art gallery Sound Fjord got in touch, asking if I’d like to speak at the soundwalk that’s being organised from there on the 18th. Here’s the flyer for the event:


The invitation was a kind one, since the London Sound Survey isn’t obviously a sound art project, more like a mix of amateur field recording and local history (or ‘psychogeography’ as some prefer to call it). The event starts at 1pm at Sound Fjord, and you’ll find full details of where that is on their website – the nearest tube is Seven Sisters. Hope you can make it.

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New Thames estuary section now added

Posted by IMR on 05 July 2010

AS PROMISED A week or so ago, there’s a new addition to the soundmaps pages with a section for the Thames estuary. There’s only half-a-dozen recordings there right now, but the framework is at least up for more to be added.

Please have a look and a listen, hope you enjoy what you find there.

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33 hours to 1984

Posted by IMR on 29 June 2010

YOU MIGHT HAVE seen Margaret Noble’s Sound Is Art blog mentioned here before. It’s a collection of marvellous sound oddities and curiosities which are added to all the time.

She does a lot more besides that, with an impressive track record in experimental music and sound art, and in her latest project Margaret will be reworking an original 1953 recording of Orwell’s 1984 to help raise funds and awareness for Amnesty International.

Have a look at the project’s fundraising page on Kickstarter here.


The project needs to raise $6,000 to get off the ground, and it’s still short with just 33 hours to go. If you can, help out by making a donation.

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Two recordings from Canvey Island

Posted by IMR on 27 June 2010

NEW PAGES FOR the sound maps section are being put together and they start with a few recordings made along the Thames Estuary. The towns, villages and marshland along the Estuary have been among my favourite places to visit for the last fifteen years.

Canvey Island is a three-mile-wide patch of Thames floodplain separated by creeks from the Essex side of the river. The western half of the island is consumed by post-industrial scrub and vast liquified gas containers. The eastern half is mainly housing, and between the two is a caravan park and a small seafront resort.

Walking along the seafront this afternoon, I came across a small group of Caribbean men and women holding an outdoor Sunday service on a bandstand. A Communion table had been set up, laden with flowers and fruit, and around this the worshippers sang and danced:


Earlier I’d tramped across the western side of Canvey Island and scrambled over a fence to get as close as possible to the oil refinery at Coryton, thinking the sound of the gas flares might be worth pointing a mic at. Grasshoppers fizzed unseen in the long grass and hot sun, ahead the refinery growled and roared.

Straight after finishing and packing up a siren sounded briefly, an eerie whale-like noise that echoed across the landscape. About half-a-minute later it sounded again, and the time after that the recorder was switched back on:


An hour later it could still be heard from the middle of the island; someone said it was a test. The new Estuary pages should be up this coming week.

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Roland binaural mics for £20!

Posted by IMR on 25 June 2010

WROTE A FEW weeks ago about Roland’s new binaural mics, but I know at least two people who’ve since got in there quick and ordered their own pairs from Planet Gizmo.

The normal list price is around £80, but somehow Planet Gizmo are selling them for just £20. One friend has already received his, and they’re the genuine article, not something that’s fallen out of a Christmas cracker. Meanwhile, I’m still waiting for mine to arrive direct from Roland. There’s a reason for middlemen connecting the consumer and the manufacturer – they’re often better at it than the manufacturer.

More news on the cheap gear front courtesy of the gadget blog Wirefresh: Zoom are releasing a new digital recorder, designated the H1, with a list price of only £89.


Roland’s new R-05 digital recorder is also now available from some UK retailers, priced around £180.


It looks like a slimmed-down version of the reliable R09-HR, although it’s not clear what functions have been reduced or omitted to achieve the lower price. Hopefully some retailers will get round to tempting buyers with bundles including both Roland’s new recorder and binaural mics.

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