One of the things you discover when you first get your hands on musical equipment is how great echo sounds. You slather on bags of the stuff and listen to the repeats and building and feedback doing extraordinary things to the source sound. Then, normally, you go one of two ways, you either learn restraint and subtlety and dial it all back or you don't and become a sound artist. But, it's still true, there's something really primal about the sounds of echo and related phenomenon. Something that really gets you.
Which might be why RJDJ works so well. It's a programme for the iPhone that takes in the sounds that surround you and plays them back to you; treated and altered in all sorts of ways. Including bags of echo. I took RJDJ for a couple of trips the other day and really enjoyed the effects of it.
This first one is a tube trip from Great Portland Street to Southwark, about 7pm on a Thursday evening. MP3 here. Some of it is just your average environmental sounds, tweaked a bit, nice, but unremarkable in any sound installation. But there are regular moments of some loveliness; like the melodic stuff that emerges about 5 minutes and 10 seconds in.
Or, this is a walk from the SouthBank to Carburton Street later on that same night. (MP3) There seem to be less of the environmental sounds in this - the music seems to be derived from the rhythm and bulk of what I was walking through. So there are intense bits that represent walking down Oxford Circus and quiet rhythmic bits towards the end as I got away from the crowds and traffic. And there's a slightly startling moment at 20:48 where a bloke who wasn't looking where we going steps into me and lets out a yell.
I think they're pretty listenable as ambient soundscapes, alright for working to, but where RJDJ really impresses is as a noticing tool. The way it plays your environment back at you, altered and treated, really makes you aware of the soundscapes you're walking through. You listen harder, notice more. It's the same effect as looking through a lens or a distorting mirror. And, as with a camera, if you're recording it, you look/hear harder.
It's well worth a try, I've only tried two scenes so far and I really liked them. It's good. (PS if the sounds quality isn't great it's because I had to record it via the headphone jack on my phone and Audio Hijack on m'computer.)