From the Isle of Dogs to Southall

Posted by IMR on 31 May 2010

A COUPLE OF weeks ago, Cafe Oto hosted a make-your-own hydrophone evening class under the genial tutelage of composer Duncan Chapman. Occasions bringing together field recordists don’t seem to happen very often in London.

More on the hydrophones soon. Duncan brought to my attention an Isle of Dogs sound map, put together by him and students at the Trinity College of Music.

It’s got an attractive interface and clicking on both the yellow buildings and magenta dot-trails opens all sorts of sound files to play. Children shout and laugh, an ambulance drives by, water laps on steps going down into the Thames, and there’s an intriguing time-lapse recording made in the courtyard of the Trinity Music College.

Equipment is no substitute for local knowledge in finding distinctive and meaningful sounds to record. The Southall Story is one of the two best local history websites I’ve yet come across (the other is Harold Hill: A People’s History). Southall is a suburb of west London with a large Asian population. Many Londoners might think Southall to be a good place to go for their dinner, if it didn’t seem so far from the city centre, but there’s a lot more to the area’s past and present than that.

The Southall Story is mainly told through words and pictures, with many different sections covering music, politics, history, film and other subjects. Luckily they’ve also included a small number of field recordings of local life on a soundscapes page.

There’s a recording made inside an Indian sweetshop, a soundwalk from St. Anselm’s to the ‘Little Mogadishu’ district, lunch at the Jalebi Junction restaurant and a visit to Southall market. I hope they keep adding to them.

There are no comments for this entry yet.