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Cities & Memory - Sound for the king (Ross seal)

from Polar Sounds by Cities and Memory

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This piece was composed by attempting to build something physical and layered out of sound. The Ross seals’ calls sit high in the frequency range, which here is imagined to be towards the surface level of the Southern Ocean, with the seals swimming and whirling gracefully beneath the waves.

Beneath that is a construction made up of kick drums and many thick layers of drone and synthesiser, which take us much further down into the weight of the ocean - and which represent some of the many threats and menaces to the Ross seals’ existence, of which they are unaware as the piece progresses. There is ship noise, there are the jolting impacts of seismic surveys, and there is the calving, the devastation of climate change, on the horizon and becoming ever more menacing as the piece progresses.

Usually when reimagining a field recording, there is some degree of processing to add atmosphere or musicality to the recording, or to draw out that element of the recording that has my attention, so I can also draw the listener’s attention to it. On this occasion, however, the field recording itself is so entirely perfect that it sits ideally in the mix with virtually nothing done to it.

The crackling ice in the middle section (and at the close) comes from the sound of a melting iceberg in our Obsolete Sounds project - surely the most terrible of all sounds to be labelled as obsolete or disappearing. Here this represents the dwindling habitats of the Ross seals.

There is sadness for and fury on behalf of the Ross seals for our contribution to their suffering - that is the true bedrock of this contribution to Polar Sounds.

credits

from Polar Sounds, released February 6, 2023

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Cities and Memory Oxford, UK

Cities and Memory is one of the world’s biggest sound projects, a global, collaborative sound art and field recording programme with the aim of remixing the world, one sound at a time. It covers more than 100 countries and territories with 5,000+ sounds and more than 1,000 contributing artists.
Thousands of field recordings, recomposed and reimagined by artists around the world. ... more

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