Sound Traces: Paris, France

by Arne Banki

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1.	Paris. Small cafe, no music, local people. Late winter, early morning. 2015. 18:25	buy track
2.	Paris. Subway ride, old man accordion. Late winter, morning. 2015. 09:55	buy track
3.	Paris. Rue des Roses, 5th floor window, playground, birds. Late winter, early afternoon. 2015. 15:20	buy track
4.	Paris. One full subway ride, departure & arrival. Late winter, afternoon. 2015. 17:20	buy track
5.	Paris. Notredame mass, beautiful voices, organ improvisation, crowd rustle. Late winter, early evening. 2015. 12:35	buy track
6.	Paris (bonus track). Sacré-Cœur mass, intense organ improvisation. Late winter, morning. 2015. 06:33	buy track

about

First time in Paris, France. Winter of January 2015, a week after Charlie Hebdo shooting. Succesfully avoided visting or even seeing Eiffel tower. Walked the empty night streets at 2am, unknowingly had a nice chat with a hooker and stumbled by accident upon deserted and quiet Notredame. Took the Métro, discovered the harmonic choir-like subway-train breaking squeals, which made me record three deliberately long Metro rides. Got strange looks from commuters for holding small unknown black apparatus with red light. Got almost thrown out of Sacré-Cœur for recording, the same at Notredame.

Not the most pleasant times for a soundscape recordist. And yet, beautifully intriguing and intense Paris offered more then enough immersive auditory material to succesfully stop myself recording at the airport and get most likely arrested.

All recordings were checked by french-speaking people to ensure no random conversations were on any deeper personal level to protect the privacy.

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Tech notes: Zoom H2n in MS/XY configuration and Tascam DR-40, both with internal microphones. Heavy post-production, mostly precise stereo and mid-side corrections due to demanding locations and recorder shortcomings. For easier listening, several very loud electric buzzes (AC in cafe, high-frequency squeels in a train,...) were tamed and softened. The Notredame mass was heavily buy invisibly edited into one long meditative track because I felt like it.

credits

released September 24, 2017

Arne Banki - field recordings, cover design & photography, audio editing

Published by Mimi Hadaka / Murmur Institute
hadaka.bandcamp.com
www.murmur.si

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