This album comprises a selection of field recordings I made in the past year. The majority of them come from Minuting, a field recording project I have been performing since July 2010. Ever since the exposure to the dense sonosphere of Jerusalem, with sounds of bells, chants, prayers, shouts, pre-recorded announcements, and buskers, I have pressed the record button of my portable audio device for at least sixty seconds, daily, each time my attention got attracted or disrupted by a particular sonic situation.
While the choice of the one-minute unit has no straightforward explanation, it can be seen as holding a symbolic meaning. In colloquial language, one minute often signifies a brief period of time for taking a break. In the phrase “give me a minute,” we are requesting a bit of extra time to accomplish something, pause for thought, or prepare an answer for a question. Similarly, minuting has been a deliberately carved out moment in time, for pausing and re-prioritizing the act of listening in visually overstimulated times. “Minute of silence”, is also a widely accepted mode of public mourning over those who have recently died, but also a form of contemplating and commemorating a tragic historical event or loss.
The minute in the title is not really a minute in practice. While the majority of recordings are indeed about sixty seconds, some others expand beyond this limit, accounting for a moment of particular attention to the soundscape. Moreover, the whole act that produces the outcome (concentration before the recording, starting the recorder, later downloading, numbering, cataloging, possibly annotating and listening to the recorded sound) is significantly longer. Ultimately, the very acts of listening and recording are more important than the record they produce.
Donations from this album or individual tracks are used to run Fragmentarium club, an independent initiative I have been running in Stockholm which unites people interested in field recording, soundwalking, sonic archiving, and attentive listening. more on
www.fragmentarium.club
released December 31, 2018