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I Can Do That For Quite A While

from Field Recordings 3 by The Argent Grub

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This track was made in response ot a call out for the 'Obsolete Sounds' project from Cities and Memory (citiesandmemory.com)
Obsolete Sounds is the world’s biggest collection of disappearing sounds and sounds that have become extinct – remixed and reimagined to create a brand new form of listening.

The track is based on an original sound recorded by Disaster Services and can be found on Freesound.

I chose this sound because it has a great natural meditative rhythm to it. I also have a friend who owns and uses a vintage printing press, so I thought there might be a chance to gather some of those sounds, but in the end that proved impractical, so I set about playing with the sound myself.

The title, “I can do that for quite a while if you want”, comes from the words captured mid-way through the original recording, and seem to capture the essence of the human endeavour featured here (both in terms of printing and the practice of sound art).

I like the idea of 'rounds' - like London's Burning, so I - split the track into 4 almost equal parts of 29s - set up a 'round' of 4 tracks, each offset by + 29s, so that the original track plays twice in total. Unlike a conventional round, all of the other tracks end when the original has gone round twice, apart from one that plays an extra 29s. This section contains the voices in the recording that are mostly lost in the rest of the round.

At this stage, the sound has not really been altered much - just amplified, offset,and layered. I then ran the original sound through Cecilia, picking random modules and settings until I found something I thought was interesting. I used the WGuideBank module, with random settings, and stretched the length of the sound to twice the original - so it would sit as a fifth track in the new mix.

Putting all tracks into Ardour, I could add effects and mix the sounds as I wanted. In the end I only added some automatic panning to move the sound left and right in the speakers.

The rhythmic movement of the sound feels very meditative and wave like. I added a sample from a field recording I had taken on Ardrossan Beach, Ayrshire, Scotland, in August 2021 and looped the sound of waves starting around the 1min 30s mark. (There is a small delay effect added to the waves audio) Where the audio ends, I start to ramp up into a new round because, well, "I can do that for quite a while if you want".

lyrics

I can do that for quite a while if you like. Yeah.

credits

from Field Recordings 3, released April 26, 2023
Thanks to:
Cities and Memory: citiesandmemory.com
Obsolete Sounds: citiesandmemory.com/obsolete-sounds/
Disaster Services: freesound.org/people/DisasterServices/
Original Recording: press.WAV - freesound.org/people/DisasterServices/sounds/252793/

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The Argent Grub image

The Argent Grub Bradford, UK

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The Argent Grub create music. There will probably be guitars involved.

Sometimes loud Sometimes quiet Sometimes loud

Working out of Juliusstrasse Studios in Bradford, UK, the recording and production is done with free and open source software. ... more

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