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Walking in Port Vell, Barcelona. May 2006.
(Binaural sound, better on headphones).

listen at radio aporee
photos of the area

Location: Scheveningen - The Hague, NL
Date: March 2009
Mics/Recorder: Rode NT-4 + 2x DPA 4060 / Fostex FR-2LE

Recorded in Leitza, in the province of Navarra. Sunday morning after the first night of the local festivities.
Waking up with the sounds of the hundreds of glass bottles accumulated while some people were actually still getting home after a long night.
Thanks to our hosts Mikel and Laura for their hospitality in our short visit to such a beautiful place.

Location: Leitza, Navarra, ES
Date/Time: 9/08/2009 - 9:00h
Mic/Recorder: 2x Aevox Classic MKII / HiMD Sony MZ-RH1

listen/download at freesound.org

Location: Ribeira, Porto (Portugal)
Date/Time: 15/07/2009 - 20:15h
Mic/Recorder: Soundman OKM II / HiMD Sony MZ-RH1

Recording some small torrents and rivers last summer near the Spain-Portugal border, in the national park of Peneda-Gerês. In collaboration with Manuel Calurano and David GF. Photos by David.

Stereo mix of an eight-channel sync recording, made using a combination of different microphones.

listen/download at freesound.org

Location: Parque Nacional da Peneda-Gerês
Date/Time: 24/07/2009 - 13:00h
Mics/Recorders: 4x Aevox Classic MKII + Rode NT-4 + 2x JRF hydrophones / Fostex FR-2LE + Sony PCM-D50 + HiMD Sony MZ-RH1

A bunch of field recordings captured during my two-week stay in Porto for the SMC09 Summer School, in July.
The stay was possible thanks to partial support from the
COST SID Action.

They are hosted in Freesound and available in aiff format.
Follow the links to listen/download each of the recordings or go directly for the pack.

Just landed: binaural soundwalk in the main hall of the airport.
Waiting for the metro at Casa da Música.
Elevated viewpoint in Ribeira, Porto´s historic neighborhood.
Street musician playing bagpipe and percussion.
Bell sounds in Ribeira.
Skaters in Casa da Música (exterior).
Casa da Música (interior).
Broken train at Casa da Música underground station.
Binaural soundwalk in Mercado Do Bolhão, a traditional market.
Binaural soundwalk along Rua da Vitoria and Escalas do Camino Novo, in Ribeira, Porto´s historical centre.
Binaural soundwalk in Cedofeita.
A walk along Passeo Verde, in Douro´s riverside.
Hydrophone recording in the Douro.
Interacting with a contact-miked metal fence, next to Ponte Dom Luis.
A trip in the funicular at Dom Luis bridge, in the riverside.
Binaural soundwalk in the park of Serralves Foundation.
Serralves park: fountains.
Serralves park: tourists.
Machines working nearby Casa da Música.
A Saturday night taxi ride to the center.
Saturday night street ambiance in Galerias, a crowded nightlife area in the downtown.
Street ambiance at Piolho, a bar terrace in the center.
Metro trip: contact mics attached to the train.
Metro trip: electromagnetic emissions.
Sea waves and wind noise at Matosinhos beach.
‘The True Artist is an Amazing Luminous Fountain’ (Portuguese version) by Bruce Naumann. Exhibited at Fundaçao Serralves.
Hydrophone recording of a fountain in Praça gomes Teixeira.

Hydrophone recording in a puddle near Rascafría, in the mountains of Madrid.
It was the last of the locations visited during an all-night-long field recording session made last week in collaboration with my friend Manuel Calurano (coordinator of MadridSoundscape.org).

There were frogs and quite a bit of insect activity there. We installed our gear and recede some distance away to let them resume their concert. I couldn´t find now the location in the map, so I guess I will add it later; I post here this excerpt anyway.

Location: Rascafría, Madrid
Date/Time: 12/07/2009 - 02:44h
Mic/Recorder: 2x Jez-Riley-French´s hydrophones / Fostex FR-2LE

During my latest visit to my family´s town in La Mancha (in the south-center of Spain) I went to make some recordings in a countryside house in the middle of an olive trees field, situated a few kilometers outside of the town. The whole region is a plateau, arid and flat, with some little hills here and there, like the ones just in front of this house, which add a resonance effect to the sounds of the cars passing by in a road situated just in between them and the house.

The effect in this specific location was noticed by a friend, who asked me to go there and make some recordings for him. He wanted to document it and get some material to work with since he is planning to make some site-specific sonic interventions in this house and others similar in the area in an attempt to mask the traffic sounds, since it seems to be something annoying for the inhabitants, who sometimes use this houses for recreational purposes.

On this first recording, made early in the morning, I tried to capture the effect as it is heard from the house.

The second one was done at midnight in a place a little bit further in the opposite direction, where a non cultivated area of wild vegetation behind the house starts.

Location: countryside in La Mancha, in between Herencia and Puerto Lápice
Date/Time: 7/07/09 - 0730h and 8/07/09 - 2330h
Mic/Recorder: Aevox Classic MKII / Fostex FR-2LE

My first contact with Berlin´s underground took place by chance and just a few days after arriving for the first time to the city. I am not speaking about the U-Bahn transport network, neither about the pretty active experimental music scene going on there (visit echzeitmusik to be up to date), but about the subterranean architecture which spans a great portion of the city.

However, in those days I was even not aware of the existence of that unnoticed and obscure underground network underneath Berlin, it was a few months afterwards which I stumbled upon the story watching a documentary which featured the Berliner-Unterwelten, a society devoted to the exploration and documentation of Berlin´s subterranean architecture (they even have a series of guided tours, a friend attended one recently and he was quite enthusiastic about it).

Herzschlag is the german word for heartbeat, and it was the name of this installation created by some unidentified artists. I didn´t see any flyer, just red stencils on some walls in the surroundings, referencing simply the word. However, we knew about it through a friend, who just invited us to go somewhere, to an special exhibition only open on Saturdays afternoon. She was quite mysterious and didn´t want to reveal more details in order not to spoil the visit. We were taken to the hidden location, descended twenty metres below ground level and when our eyes got used to the darkness of the space, we started to explore the place. An idea of what we found can be made seeing some photos and listening to this binaural soundwalk. The experience was remarkable, both because of the intriguing curiosity about what was going on there and the location itself, which was superb. I hope to explore other locations of Berlin´s underground architecture someday, and who knows, maybe even to have the opportunity of making some nice recordings of those subterranean spaces.

Location: Prenzlauer Berg, Berlin
Date/Time: 21-07-2007 - 19:30h
Mic/Recorder: Soundman OKM II / Hi-MD Sony MZ-RH1 (better on headphones)