The Spirit of Saint Mary

Brendan from Pixadelica approached me to be a part of this exciting project which itself serves as part of the launch of the 2010 Whitley Arts Festival.

I was invited to create a Soundscape for the festival and decided that I'd like to try something really new and exciting.

So here we go...

I will create a half hour soundscape that will be played around different parts of Saint Mary's exterior (that's St Mary's Church )in the Centre of Reading) on Friday October 15th.

And here's the challenge...

The soundscape will be made up from sounds from in and around Saint Mary's and ONLY from that area.

So...

Friday 3rd September - Recording 1

I cycle into town after work and visit The Butler to drop off posters for a very different kind of gig on November 6th.

Then I'm off and ready.

I walk through the Broad Street Shopping Mall (I have a quick look in Poundland for Halloween stuff as you do) and then on go the headphones and the wav. recorder on I record...

The Market

Wearing headphones whilst recording on this marvellous machine feels like havinf super hearing. I can hear everything. Drunks swearing. I wipe my nose at one point and am told to stop picking it. Market traders. A really loud trolley crashing past me. Will need to use that. Very noisy buses.

Kall Kwik

Then I nip into Kall Kwik. The photocopiers have lovely rhythm, the nice man in there looks at me like I am mad and lets me record the sound in the shop.The idea of using the rhythm of the photocopier makes me feel like Tyres from Spaced dancing to the pedestrian crossing, which reminds me I mustn't forget the crossing...

The nice man from Kall Kwik                               Tyres from Spaced