#819: 2022.10.23

first off, apologies to shumaila hemani for mispronouncing her name in this week’s show. a good excuse to play her work again and get it right. her acousmatic compositions feature field recordings from pakistan, sufi poetry, spoken word, traditional instruments, and song. they meet across the world with doug haire’s location compositions from the pacific northwest, vanessa massera’s electroacoustic compositions from canada, and siavash amini’s poetry-inspired works from iran. sounds from the aporee maps (from germany, the uk, denmark and the united states) and a framework intro by rob johanssen also from the states cap off this week’s somehow narrative edition.

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#818: 2022.10.16 [david clarke]

This edition of framework:afield, entitled moons of the solar system, has been produced in the uk by david clarke, aka @IAmTheHow. for more information see https://www.iamthehow.com/store/. producer’s notes:

Moons of the Solar System

An acoustic journey through our solar system as we visit ‘other moons’. The sounds of distant chains saws, wind turbines, elastic bands and springs are mixed and treated to convey a sense of wonder as we journey to Enceladus and Io.

Each piece accompanies a handmade print which can be viewed via the link while listening, to provide an experience in both sound and vision: https://www.iamthehow.com/store/. As the compositions are ‘slow’, with periods of silence, the use of headphones is highly recommended.

Not long ago the planets and their moons within our Solar System were thought to be void of activity, but now we know there is active geology and climate throughout. The ice bright Enceladus, a moon of Saturn, would sit in the North Sea; a small moon with a big story waiting to be told: thick ice with massive crevasses ‘The Tiger Stripes’ through which the waters of the hidden ocean erupt into the geysers that reach into space. And then there’s Io, one of the four Galilean satellites that orbits the gas giant Jupiter; it is about the same size as the Earth’s Moon, but it’s subject to intense gravitational warping, which most likely explains the high level of volcanic activity.

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#817: 2022.10.09

several new names to framework this week: the collaboration between sarah ruth and monte espina comprises a series of site-specific open-air environmental improvisations; richard scott’s compositions for field recordings and synthesizers are coincidentally released on arbirary records framework series; marc arsenault’s self-proclaimed “field recordings pop record” features a heavy presence of electro-magnetic interference and inexplicable sounds. meanwhile ingrid plum returns to our airwaves with her vocal experiments intertwined with field recordings, electronics, and a piano interior, drawing on the archive of sound poet lily greenham. andy park starts us off with a framework introduction recorded in cuckmere haven, sussex in the uk, with our introductory text spoken by his daughter wren. and we return as is our wont to the aporee maps for a selection of recent listener chosen favorites, this week from turkey, canada, denmark and the united states.

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#816: 2022.10.02 [mark vernon]

this edition of framework:afield, entitled a world behind this world, has been produced in scotland by regular contributor mark vernon. for more of his work see http://meagreresource.com/. producer’s notes:

A World Behind This World is a composed soundscape created from sounds recorded on location at the Scottish Sculpture Workshop in Lumsden, Aberdeenshire and the surrounding areas.

Depending on how you look at it – this is either an expanded version of the album released on Persistence of Sound earlier this year – or a condensed version of the original two-and-a-half-hour longform broadcast produced for Scottish Sculpture Workshop’s radio station, Lumsden Live in 2021.

In addition to sounds of the rural environment – recordings of various machines, equipment and processes from the workshop feature heavily. ‘Performed’ by technician, Eden Jolly, sound sources include the copper guillotine, extractor fans, electrical saws, drills, the furnace, welding torches, anvils, hydraulic jacks, sanding machines, grinders and electric hoists. The piece also features a recurring refrain made from the eerie sounds of the wood pellet burner that kept me awake for most of the night when I was staying on site.

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#815: 2022.09.25

getting into the autumn flow now, with our second regular edition back since our summer break. we’ve had this mola self-release waiting for airplay for far too long – it’s from 2019. but better late than never!
and we consistently love what comes out of the helen scarsdale agency, and not just because they release our own murmer sounds – our old boston buddies howard stelzer and brendan murray have put together another beautiful slab of tonal residue here. we also have new releases on both the mappa and forms of minutiae labels, both relatively young publishes who have have so far impressed us greatly with the scope of consistent quality of their releases. here we’re exploring works on those labels by alexandra spence and diane barbé, respectively. with these releases we have our latest batch of listener chosen favorites from the aporee soundmaps, and a bouncy framework introduction recorded on a trampoline in ireland by regular contributor william denton, voiced by the jumpers.

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#814: 2022.09.18 [blanc sceol]

this week’s edition of framework:afield, the first back after our summer break, is entitled river-land listening, and has been produced in the uk by blanc sceol. for more information see https://www.blancsceol.co.uk/. producer’s notes:

In 2021 we invited a group of local artists who work with sound, to participate in our piece ‘River-land Listening’, a silent walk at low tide through the muddy bed of the Channelsea river in the borough of Newham, London. We asked the artists to explore the particular sonic narratives and topography of this inter-tidal zone, each one live streaming their experience. This audio piece presents a mix of the recordings of the live streams from each the nine artists who completed the walk, providing a space for low-tide contemplation of this river. The walk was created for Sound Camp’s ‘Off Grid’ program in 2021, and in association with Surge Cooperative, part of a series of local engagement activities proposing common actions with those connected to the river or local to the area, and encouraging collective efforts to protect and celebrate its rich natural heritage.

River-land listening was developed, recorded and edited by Blanc Sceol, artists Stephen Shiell and Hannah White.

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#813: 2022.09.11

well folks, we’re back! it’s amazing how much of a process you can forget in a month, but we’re limping our way through getting everything together for this show release, and we’re sure we’ll be back to bicycle-riding level (never forget?) within a week or so. our month off was refreshing and relaxing; we mostly spent it building shelves for the framework library and reminiscing about the days when making a radio show meant presents in the (snail)mail box almost everyday. the silver lining to the internet era is that we won’t have to build any more shelves, but we do still sometimes miss all though round (and occasionally square) objects.

we didn’t do much travel during our time off, but we’re traveling in this edition – japan, the uk, germany, india, taiwan, the united states, ghana, to name a few (ok, all) of our destinations this week. our first stop (after our intro from japan) brings back memories – it’s a posthumous collection of recordings made by our good friend ian rawes, who passed away late last year, from his london sound survey project, just released as a cd and download by persistence of sound. we are also listening to self-released works by a couple of collaborative projects: mykel boyd & seah space (as post doom romance), and yen-ting hsu & yannick dauby, with a 2nd collection of field recordings from taiwan. round this off with the latest release by budhaditya chattopadhyay and a selection of recent listener-chosen favorites from the aporee soundmaps, and you’ve gone around the world in 59 minutes.

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#812: 2022.07.31 [CENSE]

You are listening to the second episode of CENSE bimonthly mixtapes series. CENSE – Central European Network for Sonic Ecologies – is a decentralised organisation, gathering artists, educators, writers and researchers, whose aim is to gather and interconnect the community behind the field of acoustic ecology. Members are united by the determination to develop a strategy allowing an impact on the current situation dealing with sound and environment. This episode focuses on walking & psychogeography.

Symptoms of Evidence mixtape series is focused on bringing the field of acoustic ecology closer to the local listeners and interested individuals, introducing field-recordings as a sonic tool for examining our sound environment and enabling us to gain a deeper knowledge on the consequences of environmental processes, together with possible solutions retrieval. further info on the network can be found on the webpage https://cense.earth/.

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#811: 2022.07.24

we’ve got one more show coming up next week, our last framework:afield of the summer, and then we’ll be taking our annual summer break, to recharge our ears and build some bookshelves. we hope you won’t forget us, and in the meantime there are hundreds of shows available in our archive to tide you over until we’re back in early september.

at the moment we’re traveling, as this summer has seen framework come out from under it’s global pandemic rock and get back on the road. we’ve been in germany, the uk, and now the u.s., where we’re sweltering in temperatures we haven’t experienced in a long time (we’ll take -30C in the winter over +30C in the summer any day!).

so for this roadtrip we’re listening to sounds recorded or composed here in the states, as well as in russia, spain, greece, iran, germany, georgia, france and croatia (probably more). we’ve got new names for our playlists as well as old favorites, and our usual segment of listener chosen favorites from the aporee soundmaps. we hope you’ll enjoy the sounds, and maybe consider going on over to our patreon page an helping us make a little progress as we enter our summer break. we can’t do this without listener support, so support us if you can!

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#810: 2022.07.17 [paul mallatratt]

When I pitched my idea for this Framework:afield episode I was on an 11 date UK tour with the band I play in, visiting the major cities in England and Scotland. As I always do now, I took my trusty field recording equipment with me with the idea of capturing what it sounds like to be on tour. A bit like they say in the Spinal Tap film, “the sights, the sounds, the smells of a hard working rock band on the road”.

Many people will have attended live music events but unless you’re the one performing you might not know what it sounds like back stage. In this episode you’ll hear what I heard on the road in the UK and Europe during tours between March and early June 2022. As you’ll hopefully gather, it’s not all glamour, there’s a lot of heavy equipment being moved around, and while each day is different they are also quite similar.

The sounds presented here are not in chronological order, but instead weave a narrative from start to finish; from flying out to start the tour, right through to the final live show, and packing up afterwards, and everything in between. I hope you enjoy the ride.

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#809: 2022.07.10

it’s always nice to be able to combine artists new to out ears with artists who helped shape our ears in the first place. it was almost 25 years ago when we first heard illusion of safety on the radio (it was their 1994 release, water seeks its own level, played on no commercial potential on boston’s wzbc) – that was when there were no online archives or published playlists and you just had to hope that the dj would tell you what you heard so you could scribble down the name, or your best approximation of what you thought they said, and head down to your favorite record store (or photocopied mailorder catalog) and see if you could find it. luckily, i did find it, and now, decades later, maybe someone else will hear IOS for the first time on this show, and the cycle will continue.

an array of new and familiar names – ana maría romano g., nula.cc, overdriven dreams, nikki sheth and alexander langedyk – accompanied IOS on this journey, along with our latest selection of listener chosen favorites from the aporee soundmaps, and a framework introduction recorded for us in northern ireland by regular contributor barry cullen.

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#808: 2022.07.03 [john f. barber]

this edition of framework:afield has been produced in the united states by john f. barber. for more information see http://www.nouspace.net/john/. producer’s notes:

Dawn Birds, Light Traffic, Melodic Machines is a 58:00 sonic narrative collage composed of field recordings from different places—Dubai, Victoria, and Vancouver—at different times. This combination seeks to foreground, through either sonic simularity or serendipity, soundscapes that are representative of fluid time and place but solidly grounded in rich listening experiences.

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#807: 2022.06.26

we’re late, late, late, which doesn’t happen very often these days, because it’s usually (and currently is) travels that cause me to be late with the playlist, and there hasn’t been much of that happening since the world ended over 2 years ago. but i’m back on the road this summer, and writing this to you from london, framework’s original home.

a dense mix this week (isn’t it always?) that will keep this short and let you get to – two alexandras, an elijah and a bruno mingling with our usual aporee soundmaps selections and an intro by a william. enjoy! next week’s edition of framework:afield, produced in the united states by a john, should appear right on time from the safety of framework HQ back in sweltering estonia.

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