.. sound chronicles

about

Ever since the early eighties, like many, I have a regular companion: a Sony walkman. (It was a stereo one, at first. But already for many years now, I use a mono machine, which in fact is only suitable for use with the 'normal type' cassette tapes.) Unlike most, however, I never ever use my walkman to listen to music. It's my dictaphone. I use it to record. Whichever sounds for whatever reason wherever suddenly make me listen. I have a series of little notebooks (on the cover of the first one of which, long ago, I wrote the Dutch word 'snapschoten' - you will not find this in a dictionary; it is kind of a dutchification of the english word 'snapshots', of course) in which I write down date, place, time and a short description of each recorded fragment. In the course of the years this gave rise to an extensive collection of 'lo fi' recorded real life sound samples.

Sound Chronicles ("Chronique Sonore") is a series of montages that I started early 2000, making - pretty much exclusive - use of this collection of 'real life' recordings.
1. The first volume comprises 17 items, created between january 2000 and april 2003. I made a Flash streamer to enable you to listen to all of these as a continuous monophonic broadcast. All you need is a Flash 4 or more plugin and a reasonably quick internet connection.
When you hit the 'play' button, the streamer starts playing the available tracks, one after the other, from a random starting point in the list. The 'next' button enables you to skip to the next piece in the list. Hitting 'stop' interrupts the playback, which at any moment can be continued by pushing 'play' again.
Alternatively, you can listen to the same playlist as a (hi fi) continuous random stream on --> Park.nl's iRadio.

2. The second volume of the Sound Chronicles is the first in a series of (almost) unedited and (almost) one-take monophonic dictaphone recordings, that I call 'Zuivere Slaolie'. It has been recorded in Amsterdam on october 26th, 2005 between 12h00 and 13h00. The few edits and the compilation were done in the spring of 2006.

remembering