PURE SOUND - Traversing the Ambient Vernacular

Performed with Maria Sledmere for Sound Thought Festival, Glasgow, 2019.

Published by SPAM Press, 2019

Pure Sound: Traversing the Ambient Vernacular comprises an experimental audio-lyric essay which weaves together original prose-poetic sequences (performed live with two speakers) with digitally-edited field recordings taken from various European cities in June 2019. Taking its cue from Lisa Robertson’s term ‘ambient vernacular’, Pure Sound follows its narrator’s frustrated attempts to seek ‘authentic’ sound amid the din of late-capitalist urban space. Attending to the situational nuance of a present-tense thickened by urban density and midsummer heat wave, Pure Sound hones in on the unnoticed, fugitive noises that characterise the procedures of everyday travel and encounter. Taking as its central motif the public piano found in train stations, Pure Sound gestures towards points of sonic contact between street performance, transport, commercial space, tourism and infrastructure.

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