This album is released into a market that is currently saturated withethnic field recordings of the kind proffered by Sublime Frequencies,Touch and other labels, and amidst the current vogue for treated andlaptop-edited field recordings that lose all sense of context. Indian Soundscapesdistinguishes itself in being almost entirely dissimilar from all ofthis other material; by simply presenting crisp, clean, unprocessedrecordings that don't aspire to any lofty academic goals. Theserecordings were simply undertaken as a method for a traveler toencapsulate and memorialize the rich audio landscape encountered in anexotic land. As such, it can be experienced as you would experience alengthy trawl through a friend's collection of slides or home videosfrom a recent trip. Depending on your patience and level of engagement,this could either be a recommendation or a warning. Listening to thesediscs, I was treated to two hours of audio snapshots from around India,many taken on street corners and public spaces, where a cacophony ofhuman noises combine with site-specific open-air sounds, randomsnippets of radio music, the tinkling of bicycle bells, the PA systemat a train station, the thick buzz of nighttime insects, birds chirpingand monkeys howling. For the most part, these soundscapes are notedited within an inch of their lives, and many of the tracks areallowed to play until one can fully immerse oneself in this particularlocation. For listeners like me, with extreme synaesthesiacassociations between sound and sight and smell and touch and taste,records like these are a special treat. I was able to fill in thesensory blanks provided by these richly rendered audio documents,smelling the rich smell of spices, engine exhaust, rotting garbage,sulphurous water, musky jungle odors and complex combinations of these.I was reminded of the liberating sense of confusion often experiencedin a foreign place whose language and customs are largely a mystery.There are also some incredibly haunting moments, such as the "EchoingChildren" on the second disc, or the spirited communal singing andmusical performance in the third extract recorded at the TirupatiTemple. The packaging for this collection is lovely: a wooden boximprinted with a colorful primitivist collage houses the double-CD (thealbum is also released on vinyl), and the booklet inside contains manywonderful color photographs of India, also taken by Powne. Thiscollection certainly provoked many moments of self-reflection, where Iquestioned the complicated layers of artifice that Western societyrequires, that seem especially alienating when juxtaposed with thepurely human simplicity of poverty and a daily struggle fortranscendence that characterizes the life of an Indian villager. samples:
- You Have Chocolate, No Money
- Echoing Children
- Tirupati Temple III
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