Aural Films presents "Fog Music." A series of recordings inspired by the weather condition known as fog. Light and dark, wet and dry, this invasive event is a great source of inspiration for sound artists from around the world. This project seeks to publish 24 hours of these recordings as an on-going series for all to hear and enjoy.
Read Joe's notes on the composition:
When Jack mentioned this project, I immediately thought of a piece composed from foghorns, so this is a musique concrète piece, made up entirely of foghorn. bell, and onboard ship and boat samples. Everything was assembled in Garageband.
It has its genesis in a day I went out to the San Francisco Wave Organ to do a field recording. It was a very foggy day, and the various ships and boats were blowing their foghorns along with the Golden Gate horns. The water lapped against the jetty and into the wave organ's pipes, and buoy bells came across the water as if they were only a few feet away. This is my impression of that day.
released March 16, 2015
Joe McMahon - Composition and Production.
Jack Hertz - Cover Photo.
I mined
freesound.org for as many useful examples as I could find. I decided that I wanted to go more textural than I could with just sample collage, so I Paulstretched the St. Lawrence River and San Francisco samples to a full hour, then worked a collage of the other sample atop this, processing them to achieve a drone context. I picked up the sailboat interior sample because it looked intriguing, and after listening, decided it would work as a foreground textural counterpoint to the more distant and inchoate drones, bells, and horns.
The final result lies somewhere between a drone piece and a field recording - an imaginary seascape bringing California, New Brunswick, Quebec, Norway, Germany, Slovakia, Turkey, and France together in one auditory place. Enjoy!
140898__exuberate__foghorn-goldengatebridge-0312 clean stretch.aiff
- Foghorns at the Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco CA, 2012.
157284__inchadney__ships-horn.wav
- Ship’s foghorn, unknown location, 2012.
160882__bob-burgess__swallowtail-lighthouse-old-fog-bell.mp3
- The old lighthouse fog bell at Swallowtail Lighthouse on Grand Manan island, New Brunswick, Canada, 2012.
162350__felix-blume__boat-horn.wav
- Horn of a cruiser in Istanbul.
198853__bone666138__foghorns.wav
- Unknown localtion, 2007.
199961__innesjul__brume-criquets-sillery-septembre-a1-01.wav
- Foghorns of two ships meeting in the St. Lawrence River at Sillery (Quebec City, Quebec) on a foggy night, 2013.
200289__vumseplutten1709__river-cloud-ii-shipsbell clean.wav
- River Cloud II, July 2013, Danube at Bratislava.
23452__milo__msfinmarken-bergen.aif
- The MS Finnmarken entering Bergen Harbour on Oct 6, 2006 around 2:30 pm
252670__augustsandberg__sailboat-sailing-interior-2.wav
- Below the waterline aboard a sailboat off the east coast of the US, 2014.
69663__schaarsen__sfx-nebelhorn.mp3
- Every day an exactly 2 pm the ferry to Oslo, Norway, leaves the harbour of Kiel, Germany. 2009.
92911__acclivity__foghornblast.mp3
- The LD Lines ferry Seven Sisters leaving Newhaven for Dieppe in a pea-souper 17 Mar 2010.
Joe McMahon is a computer programmer, musician, and photographer from San Jose, CA. His music explores the fractal boundary between planning and coincidence, influenced by his early experiences playing jazz. He has released music on Just Not Normal, and Earth Mantra Records, and runs the Suborbital Records netlabel; he is one of the administrators for
Stillstream.com, and has performed with Team Metlay and at the Different Skies electronic music festival in Arcosanti, AZ. His website is
pemungkah.com
Jack Hertz has been playing, composing and recording for more than 30 years. He is a seasoned improvisor who finds all aspects of creating sound fascinating. From the early percussion instruments to the present day hardware and software innovations. More at
JackHertz.com
Aural Films is an online record label (netlabel) that releases high-quality soundtrack albums for movies that do not exist. We cover a wide range of music styles ranging from ambient to experimental to popular to soundtrack musics. Often on the same albums. You can find our complete catalog of releases online at
auralfilms.com
Aural Films Catalog No. AF0112
