This is not a simulation?

The working title of a new 7 minute track - ‘This is not a simulation?’ - raises the question what is real, am I dreaming, are we in an alternate reality?

Cities and Memory invites sound artists to make responses to field recordings made around the world. I found myself drawn to an audio recording made on the platform of the Gare Du Nord in Paris. Interestingly a key feature of the recording is some fake birdsong perhaps being piped over loudspeakers onto the platform whilst everyday passengers are milling about and passing through the station.

I wondered about what do we mean by fake birdsong, I also thought about train travel and the mesmeric sounds made by a train passing along the tracks. Having recently been on a long journey to New Zealand and back I reflected on the fact that travel itself takes you outside of your normal frame of reference into another reality.

Philip K Dick wrote a series of short stories called, Electric Dreams a common thematic is the idea of losing one’s self in another reality. In ‘Exhibit Piece’ the main character finds himself confused having been transported back in time into an earlier reality, into what he thought was a museum exhibit, but he is now experiencing it as his own reality, but simultaneously his memories are from the present day and he tries to grapple with these two conflicting realities.

The project City and Memory requires that the original audio is used somewhere, somehow within the new track. There are no other rules other than a minimum / maximum length. You will hear some of the original audio, but I have also taken samples converted to midi as part of the process of creating the rest of the track. Other recorded bird sounds and a recording of a small bell responding to the wind build additional layers.

This track is not harmonic or built around typical compositional ideas. It is instead a slightly surreal and jarring rendering of sounds including percussion, are we perhaps hearing what a bird might hear? There is hopefully an idea of going on a journey, departing, passing through some other space or time and then arriving perhaps changed. At some point was it not real? Is this real now or is it a simulation?