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Arvik Torrenssen - Taajuuksia ja ä​ä​niä

from Shortwave Transmissions by Cities and Memory

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about

Our primary audio genre is composition of ambient soundscapes using a combination of digital computer software, analogue field recordings and electronic experimentation to produce acoustic sounds, textures and undulating tones - rather than the more traditional use of musical notes, scales and rhythms - which allows for a richer freedom of expression, resulting in generative soundscapes that can develop with complexity as a track evolves.

This track - Taajuuksia ja ääniä meaning "frequencies and tones" – is based on and uses samples from the reel-to-reel tape recording taken by a young Dan Robinson during the 1970s in the USA, using a rare Hammarlund HQ-180A/X shortwave receiver (the X version uses fixed crystal units in place of the clock). Dan had tuned into the other side of the world to receive the long distance "DX" radio station the Voice of Saudi Arabia which was testing a new powerful shortwave radio transmitter system. Inspired by many such shortwave transmissions, Dan would over the course of the next few decades forge a distinguished career as a foreign and domestic correspondent and Senior White House reporter for the Voice of America, himself reaching out across the world through shortwave and other communications media during 30 plus years of service to the US International Broadcasting Bureau.

Shortwave radio has many similarities with the creation of ambient drone generative soundscapes, such as the use of discrete frequencies, harmonics and heterodynes when using multiple phased sounds and signals; for example, the interference and static from the original track, usually the noises which are unwanted when listening to a radio, are very useful to use within ambient soundscapes, and many were sampled and used, for example the atmospheric “static crashes” and the hum at the start of the recording which was used to create the base layer bass tone. The addition of the halfaouine recreates a typical shortwave broadcast station "interval signal" which we processed using a phase distortion tools to mimic shortwave ionospheric fading and signal degradation.

And exactly as the original recording stated "our present transmission is experimental" - ours is too; and we would like to take this opportunity to thank Dan Robinson for his original recording and to all at Cities and Memory project for this opportunity to reimagine this fragment of shortwave radio history.

Mastered by Francis Gri at KSND (krysalisound.com/mastering)

credits

from Shortwave Transmissions, released February 13, 2022

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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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