Audio Archaeology Series Volume 3: Brest
Sheet Erosion is the third episode in a series of works exploring audio archaeology and found sound. This instalment is set in the city of Brest, France.
The piece draws on field recordings made in early 2020 during the storms Ciara and Dennis, alongside a collection of found open-reel tapes dating from the 1970s and 80s. The tapes contain domestic recordings but primarily document the recordist Michel’s musical tastes and the radio programmes he listened to at the time. Listening to them, it became apparent that what we choose to record ultimately becomes a record of ourselves — our tastes, interests, emotional states, even our personalities.
Individually, the recordings offer few explicit clues. Collectively, however, a clearer portrait begins to emerge; patterns form and certain character traits become discernible. Recorded with a microphone placed in front of a speaker rather than directly cabled, these lo-fi captures of radio and TV programmes allow daily life to bleed into the frame: ambiguous background activities, babies crying, feedback, chairs scraping, fragments of conversation. Domestic life and the broadcast collapse into one another.
In the composed work, family histories and musical preferences are transposed onto a contemporary soundscape of Brest. Over-saturated tape distorts not only sound but time itself. Speeds fluctuate. Chronologies blur. Discrete moments fuse and overlap. Through these temporal fissures, events slip loose from linear sequence, unfolding instead within a chimerical, non-linear space. Though the geography remains constant, would the city portrayed here be recognisable to those whose lives are inscribed within these recordings?
Field recordings used in the piece include: Le Téléphérique de Brest (cable cars), hotel lifts, wind whistling between railings on the Pont de Recouvrance, wind whistling through gaps in doors, traffic, ventilation units, fans, light bulbs, alarms, automatic toilets, soap dispensers and hand driers.
The piece was originally commissioned as a radio work for Kunstradio and was first aired on Ö1, Austria on Sunday 29th August, 2021, 23:00 – 0:00 (CET). An album version has since been released as a CD on the Sonoris label.