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Richi​ș​, Sibiu: a day & 1​/​2 in the life

from Romania Phonographies, 2015​-​2016 by AKASHIC RECORDS

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The aims of the work change from one listening position to the next. The overall approach is to capture the sound of life in Romania, as it's coming at me. There's a startling effect when you realize how much wave & particle packs into one day in one town of modest size. The noises of workers (pithy) and the stillness of the villages, or the inescapable baying of hounds, the rattle of unknown objects, unseen animals outside our tent & those insects furrowing, almost all forgotten. Camping created the most permeable atmosphere for listening to the layers of this subsconscious process, the cosmos only a thin membrane away, communing in the mind, grass nearer to nose. In Richis, we had many encounters with people suddenly, although the only one encounter of which you, the listener, will hear, was with the local children, who were unaware I had switched on the the machine. Otherwise, the face to face meeting often meant I'd stow my gear, so as not to attract attention or frighten people off.

The thought that I presently listen to sounds that seem precious to me but which others, the local people, are probably a banal, quotidian, never occurs to me until I am writing something like this and the "dance about architecture" begins, the problem of metaphysics, redundancy & by word-smear this same experience loses it's characteristic details. Best to shut up and gesture pure perception alone go to work. The experience of on-site listening, and recording, permits diverse levels of pleasure and recognition. One level allows me to recall the "empty" is often the "full". Another level allows my escape into another experience. Another permits me into a field of my own local (present) environment as being potentially as profound as any other. Another to realize, therefore, all locations on the earth are part of the planet and that no one place is more important to one another and it redefines the ecology of the global situation in terms of a transcendent egalitarianism, an actual utopia, if you care or think about it. It reminds me that the next time I think I'm not hearing or experiencing anything that I might have another think coming.

In this section, we meet the rector of the Evangelical cathedral, who speaks about the painting of the mysterious Green Man opposite of Jesus in the icon. Later he rings the bell. We meet local children and have fun trying to communicate while they perform something of a circus act, with tumbling, silly magic tricks, jokes on names, mock martial arts. What we didn't manage to record was the meeting on the second day with the older teenagers who were more diffident, a bit too cool. We found ourselves like teenagers on the first day of school. We wander onto the outskirts and find the cemetery with the great squeaking metal gate, like the jaws of Oz's old Tin-man. And all the while, the village life goes on bumping into in the form of girls who want to take photos of us and who pose for photos we take of them. Cows and goats are driven through the streets and literally the rolling up of carpets from the sidewalks as if the sidewalks themselves were to be preserved from ghostly midnight treading. And yet, I managed to be wide awake when the huge gates of the court-yard were opened and the workers started hammering tiles into place on the roof of the school. The peculiar echoes you hear are caused by the multiple walls surrounding us in the open court-yard. Enjoy and share.

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from Romania Phonographies, 2015​-​2016, released October 10, 2015

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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

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