So the first thing I posted on this blog was Rachel’s with Wouldn’t Live Anywhere Else (read the post here) which is an abstract-sound scape-meets-experimental-chamber-music piece. Caribou has posted a more raw soundscape on Soundcloud, and I’m a real sucker for the genre so I thought I’d share it.
I understand a-lot of people can’t really get into the idea of ‘found sound’ pieces; in-fact awhile ago I quoted Edgar Varèse in saying “Music is organised sound”, and Village is a track that challenges this idea to it’s very core.
Simply put, Village is a recording of two or three men having a causal conversation about text messaging in what sounds like a restaurant- but I think there’s a somewhat romanticised idea behind recording and sharing the sounds of civilization. I think John Cage put it best when he was talking about his composition 4’33” (an infamous contemporary peice which consisted of nothing but 4’33” of silence, which I’ve linked here)
There’s no such thing as silence. What they thought was silence, because they didn’t know how to listen, was full of accidental sounds.
While Cage‘s 4’33” is very much about experiencing the present moment that the piece is being performed, Caribou‘s Village presents a twist to the idea, which gives you the opportunity to experience a different setting, on the other side of the planet. Upon each listen your imagination adds more and more to the piece, at first I was interested in the conversation that can be heard, then the surrounding environment- the cars, the clanging of cutlery, the subtle noises of distant chirping birds.
Village is a minute-long moment captured forever through sound, bottled up in an mp3 file and able to be revisited again and again.
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