We’ve updated our Terms of Use to reflect our new entity name and address. You can review the changes here.
We’ve updated our Terms of Use. You can review the changes here.

Romania & Bulgaria: Monastaries, Gorge Streams, Storms & Other Animals of Sound, 2022

by Field Recordings for Akashic Records by Jeff Gburek

supported by
Bernd Herzogenrath
Bernd Herzogenrath thumbnail
/
1.
Cheille Turzii Weave (see the album notes) 07:50
buy track
2.
Cheile Turzii: Pure Water/ Apă Curgătoare 05:10
buy track
3.
Transition Marked By Tone 00:16
buy track
4.
Alba Iulia: Watermelon Ambulance & Jet Fighters 04:00
buy track
5.
Alba Iulia: Still Creek Pebble Drops 05:59
buy track
6.
Alba Iulia: Rising Night Tide of the Creek Surprise 07:09
buy track
7.
Payphone Tone 00:16
buy track
8.
Corabia: Danube, Run-away Cow, Bird Tree 08:31
buy track
9.
Islaz: Oribatids' Dance and Dine Under Our Tent 04:12
buy track
10.
Phone Tone 00:17
buy track
11.
Ferry roars across Danube to Nikopol, Bulgaria 02:00
buy track
12.
Rila Monastir Fountain 05:16
buy track
13.
Rila Tone & Voices 00:23
buy track
14.
Rila Monastir Long Walk. Basilica to Graveyard 20:36
buy track
15.
Belovo: Off-Loading Timber 01:12
buy track
16.
Sofia: Basilica Service with Female Vocalist 04:11
buy track
17.
Sofia, Bulgaria: Women's Market: Женски пазар 06:58
buy track
18.
Bachkovo Monastir Sound Walk 18:30
buy track
19.
Nikopol: engine rooms, repair shed, inner worlds of the avergage ferry (odors not included) 04:16
buy track
20.
Islaz Storm (Romania) 15:48
buy track

about

This album coould be considered a travelogue in sounds, a sonologue, a book of audio poems. I decided to take a more casual approach to recording and encouraged myself to engage in some spontaneaous narrations, descriptions and allow something more intimate and personal to emerge among the soundscapes, with a vague hope it might save me later verbal explainations. There are however some things it might be useful to know. You can read about that in the album notes. Phone tones from various phone booths encountered on the road mark some transitions.

Track 1: This is soundcape composed of numerous tracks recorded in the Turda Gorge in Romania edited mainly to avoid the considerable wind artefacts. Goats, bells, greeting a sheperd, interacting with plastic rubbish left beside the stream, talking to myself and the eavesdropping microphone, listening to the water. A full sonic essay on the Gorge is available on my Romania Phonographies album on this site, just in case you have a deeper desire for the highs and the lows.

Track 2: Simply the rushing water recorded in various locations of one of the tributaries of or perhaps even the Hășdate river itself as it winds through the valley and becomes shallow enough to cross by foot, hopping on stones, although lthough you will likely have to wade a bit.

Tracks 4,5,6: Outside the city of Alba Iulia we camped near a creek between a sand mine and a small mainly Roma community. The bell of the churches 5 km away were audible still and the water in the creek was crystal clear and the pebbly path popular among locals who came to splash about and cool off and water their horses. Little did we know that in the middle of the night the waters would swell in the creek. I woke after noticing the change in the sound. The transformation of the air pressure is and density is audible if one listens closely to the whole of track 6.

After being discovered by a very kindly Romanian fellow in a village where we stopped to picnic, we were told of a camping area where the Olt and Danube rivers flow together. Track 9 is a sound study of a beetle I managed to identity later as en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oribatida The apparently like to get things on at night.

Many varieties of watery experience at Rila Monsatery: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rila_Monastery

Track 15 features a mix of looped tracks of workers off-loading huge long from a truck in front of a compound in Belovo.

Track 16 was recorded at an Orthodox Basilica on Stefan Stamboul Street near the Woman's Market featured in Track 17

Track 18: A soundscape composed of three sound walks on the grounds of the monastery. Watch your steps in the corridors of wood and stone. Full on thunderstorm. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bachkovo_Monastery

Track 19 was recorded on the trip to Bulgaria but I decided it was also suitable for tyhe return trip, since I didn't record on the return trip. Here I took advantage of open doors and let the microphone visit different rooms aboard the ferry.

Track 20: Camped again at the covergence of the Olf and Danube rivers, back in Romania, were enjoyed a very dramatic thunderstorm confluence. Unfortunately the rain was so extreme I could not pull out other microphones to catch other angles of the sonic experience.

credits

released June 28, 2023

license

tags

about

AKASHIC RECORDS image

AKASHIC RECORDS Poland

Guitarist, composer, sound designer, field recordist, shortwave radio poet, blending electro-acoustic, electronica, spectral comp., cracked circuits, sounding organic objects with an ear towards earth voices. Studied Javanese and Balinese gamelan and theories of Partch and Xenakis. Working with dance/theater/butoh co. Djalma Primordial Science. More than 400 concerts throughout Europe since 2005. ... more

contact / help

Contact AKASHIC RECORDS

Streaming and
Download help

Redeem code

Report this album or account

If you like Romania & Bulgaria: Monastaries, Gorge Streams, Storms & Other Animals of Sound, 2022, you may also like:

Bandcamp Daily  your guide to the world of Bandcamp

On Bandcamp Radio

Featuring Riley Pinkerton (aka The Rat Queen) from the theatrical NYC rockers, Castle Rat.
listen now