Tiny Stories...
Collaborative story telling with Kate Romano
Commissioned by Lichfield Festival 2020, Kate and Rob have created seven tiny stories for the online Lichfield Festival. These little collages of music-and-spoken-word are all less then 5 minutes long and form a wünderkammer of curiosities…. ghost trains, snowglobes, clocks, electricity pylons, ships in bottles and an extraordinary Lichfield feminist icon. They conclude with a reflection on the strange and silent times in which we find ourselves. All the material was created and recorded in Rob and Kate’s separate homes and Rob’s soundscapes are derived from the sound of Kate’s voice, field recordings made during the lockdown and original composition.
Soundscape source material:
The portable sound recorder can be carried in much the same way, and for a similar purpose, as someone carries a camera - just in case something extraordinary (or remarkably ordinary, but unnoticed…) happens…
All birdsong was recorded close to his home - Guilden Morden, Hertfordshire - a sleepy village, around 15 miles from Cambridge. But what is remarkable about the sound is that this is 20 miles from Stansted and Luton Airports respectively, and 40 miles north of central London.
Other notable, pre-Covid, field recordings include the deafening ‘quiet please’ public-address inside the Pantheon, Rome and the steam trains of Worth Valley, Yorkshire – most famous as the setting for the film The Railway Children. Contact microphones were used to capture the hidden phone transmitter electrical hum found in a local church. Sounds of the sea originated in Rhosniegr, Anglesey and have been recorded over the past fifteen years. Wine glasses for Snowglobes were recorded by Kate, and performed by Kate and daughter Livvy during the lockdown.
A teaser...
Timekeeping, timetables and whistles
https://soundcloud.com/goddery