ELZ's Blog

Summary, notable parts and reflection upon Chapter 3 from the book Ocean of Sound by David Toop

The chapter (titled: Crystal World) is mainly about the American composer and sax player La Monte Young and glimpses into fragments about his career, influences, interests and life.

The Theatre of Eternal was La Monte’s band of performing groups including colour and light installations by his collaborator Marian Zazzela and included Jon Hassell on the trumpet, Garrett List on the trombone, Angus Maclise on percussion and John Cale playing a modified viola. The ensemble’s early work was available to be heard on a tape from 1964: ‘Sunday Morning Blues’. These are the people who lived around in New York bohemian circles and led creative lives including working with bands like The Velvet Underground, The Primitives and The Falling Spikes. 

La Monte was mostly recording trance explorations influenced by rain as a rhythmic pattern. After some recorded tapes were sold so little of it survived to this day. La Monte Young’s music was only available on some limited copies of 7’’ Flexi-discs. Now in recent years some of his significant work has been made available on CDs even though they never reached the masses. 

In 1962 La Monte opens ‘Dream House’ which was a space where his music would be played on a constant and experiences. The idea of a permanent location gave room for the pieces to grow, develop and evolve a life on their own and these were all before electronics were used in the music. 

The chapter goes on some anecdotes about La Monte’s earlier inspirations from his time living at his grandmother’s house in Los Angeles, listening to power plants to his time at UCLA in musicology field. He listened a lot of different and eclectic recordings such as gagaku music, pygmy music and Balinese music doing his ethnomusicology minor at UCLA. By absorbing all of these musical information and collection of sounds in his head he draw inspiration and developed a unique take on music from early on.

Toop then goes on to talk about why he wanted to centre La Monte. Understanding La Monte was understanding of listening to yourself because he highlighted this discipline through his work. Toop says its almost like projecting your own nervous system against the background of sound which was a starting point of minimalism and influential names like Philip Glass that is so big today. 

a swarm of butterflies encountered on the ocean:

Toop here lists a couple of year specific events he have been to and describes them a little bit including 1968’s Middle Earth —a psychedelic club in Covent Garden, London— 1994’s Disobey Club where he saw Aphex Twin and Richard James play and an evening in 1960’s with Yoko Ono accompanied by electronic music composer Richard Maxfield who had a view to collaborate with La Monte on different series of new music concerts. 

Maxfield’s 1961 work Steam IV was a tape including processed sounds of steam recorded from radiators in his NYC apartment then manipulated which was inevitably inspired by David Lynch’s Eraserhead.

night music: 

In this passage Toop looks a bit deeper into Maxfield’s work and his usage of oscilloscopes with a tape recorder. He thinks it was similar to sounds of insects and birds that you would hear on a summer night. It was also a bit about highlighting sounds that are not really audible. Like editing down the sound of a heavy traffic so it starts sound link like sea waves and surfing. 

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The chapter then goes on to touch Terry Riley known as a pioneer of minimal composing. Riley is originally a piano player that was inspired by the music of Bach, Debussy and Bartok. He wanted to always keep his art open to improvisation and making music on the spot. He was inspired by La Monte and John Coltrane and took up to play soprano. He becomes the a master in trance improvisation with his Persian Surgery Dervishes album recorded in 1971 and 1972 in Paris. The album consisted of recordings of an electric organ and a tape delay system. Riley’s influence places itself in electronic music when acts like Baby Ford and 808 State heavily uses repetitive and minimal piano chords in the Acid House recordings. 

Overall this chapter talks about minimalist composers such as Terry Riley and La Monte Young,  and their experimentations through the sounds that surrounded them, how their ideas came to life, which influences they took inspiration from and how it all developed. I enjoyed reading the chapter even though minimalism is the movement or sound I am least interested in music and production in general. It is really interesting to read and understand how paying attention to little sounds we are always surrounded by can trigger our conscious into developing new ideas fro them and turn them into pieces of our art. Being raised in a generation that mostly makes laptop music through midi processing and sampling , sometimes forget to appreciate the little sounds that are around me like birds, the sound of the wind, my surroundings and background and get drawn more into the loudest sound in the room possible. This chapter is inspiring me to pay attention a bit more to my surroundings and maybe do some recordings around. The part where the chapter talked about Maxfield’s idea of turning recordings into sounds that wouldn’t be audible like recording of a heavy traffic and processing it in a way so that it almost resembles a noise and sound of sea waves is inspiring and interesting. I have tried recording my surroundings once but I never actually experimented with them. Doing this reading, summarising and reflecting exercise is inspiring and motivating me to do so.

Toop, D. (2001) Ocean of Sound: Aether Talk, Ambient Sound and Imaginary Worlds: Ambient sound and radical listening in the age of communication. 5-star edition. London: Serpent’s Tail. 

Pink Floyd creates an enormous world of floating sounds, experimental usage of gear and a narrative that was never heard executed so beautifully and seamlessly before. I have always been so interested in concept albums that tells a story from beginning to the end. But what especially really interests me is when an album is continuous in its mixing and production. Where tracks melt into each other and some might reference earlier or later tracks as the album goes by. I remember listening to The Dark Side of the Moon when I was a kid and being so surprised by how a vocal sample and the melodic theme of Breathe (In The Air) later appeared on the track The Great Gig in the Sky. Even though I’ve encountered this type of a concept later in life with other albums such as Madonna’s Confessions on a Dancefloor (2005) and King Gizzard and the Lizzard Wizard’s Nonagon Infinity (2016) I was so surprised by how good this was done back in 1973. Alan Parsons using Studer A80 tape machines that can handle 16-tracks was able to do this with no digital or computer technology available at the time. Gilmour says this was achieved by snipping bits of tape of each track and sticking the ends together. This just shows how mixing can change everything when working on an album. 

Second thing I wanted to reflect upon while listening to The Dark Side of the Moon is sampling and the mystique concrete influences the album had, especially on the track ‘Money’. The band and the producers on the album tried so many amazing tricks to achieve and mix these things into the rock songs on this album. Nick Mason the famous drummer of the band states in one of the interviews about the album ‘I had drilled holes in old pennies and then threaded them onto strings; they gave one sound on the loop of seven’. As a producer who samples quite a lot in my music I was so inspired to record more objects in inconvenient ways when I got more into how the producers sampled some of the stuff for the album.

Lastly the usage of EMS Synthi on the album. It is a modular analog synthesiser that later came with a built-in sequencer and the band uses this heavily on the album. Overall in the album they create warm, wavy and dark sounds that accompanies all the songs throughout the album. EMS can be heard most prominently on the track On the Run. From the 0:19 mark throughout the song there is an ongoing sequenced synth line that creates a futuristic and space-age like vibe and the resonance, modulation and the speed of the sequenced synth line changes and moves around throughout the song which was really shocking to listen to when I first heard the album. This apparently came with experimentation as Gilmour came up with the melody and Roger Waters overhearing this came to play with it and created the sequence himself. 

As an electronic music producer I’m so impressed always with the production of The Dark Side of the Moon and how electronic of a record it really is even though its considered to be a canonical rock album.

MusicTech. (2015) Landmark Productions: Pink Floyd – The Dark Side of the Moon. Available at: https://musictech.com/guides/essential-guide/landmark-productions-pink-floyd-the-dark-side-of-the-moon/ (Accessed: 3 December 2022)

LouderSound. (2022) The making of Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side Of The Moon: lyrically bleak, musically bonkers and, somehow, the 4th best-selling album of all time. Available at: https://www.loudersound.com/features/the-making-of-pink-floyds-dark-side-of-the-moon (Accessed: 3 December 2022)

Derrett, M. (2018) The Use and Interpretation of Narrative Production Elements In Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side Of The Moon. Available at: https://blog.yorksj.ac.uk/musicproduction/2018/01/22/the-use-and-interpretation-of-narrative-production-elements-in-pink-floyds-the-dark-side-of-the-moon/ (Accessed: 3 December 2022)

British producer Burial is mostly known for his mysterious and ambient creations processing them through sampling and layering techniques. He is considered to be one of the masters of ‘hauntology’. A word used to describe music that has a specific familiar feeling and ambient of nostalgia with vintage found-sound montages incorporated within the music. When you listen to Burial’s iconic album ‘Untrue’ it almost makes you feel like walking in the empty and cold streets of a town that existed in the past, almost a ghost town now. 

Throughout the whole album Burial cements vocal samples all over the tracks with pitching them up and down to create an eerie feeling. These samples are mostly from covers of already existing songs. The vocal samples are used in a way where they only resemble human voice now and it almost sounds like ghosts or past voices are talking to us through thick cold air or inside of our minds. This of course was a desired approach in Burial’s music which is all about eerie and sorrowful nostalgic future. 

The synthesis in these tracks are really deep and mostly in minor scales. There always is a heavy and wet baseline underneath the tracks that carries beautiful pads and a prominent vinyl crack sound. This vinyl crack sound is interesting to me because its placed so carefully within the tracks. Sometimes it can be heard really loud, sometimes it’s deep down within the sound. The title track untrue opens with some samples that resembles door and feet walking to me. Which then proceeds to a nice breakbeat and vocal samples. 

In an interview Kobe9 the owner and founder of Hyperdub record label which Burial releases with tells that the album samples a lot of TV shows, video game original soundtracks and loads of FX sounds. The track Ghost Hardware might be one of the examples of these. While most of these songs include singing vocal samples dominantly, this track in particular features a VoiceOver talking voice that splits the track to a little silence before the looping chords hit again.

When the album is listened over and over again from start to finish it definitely makes you feel like you have entered this world Burial created which does not exist in the real world. By using familiar sounds and samples Burial creates a creepy but hauntingly beautiful new world to us. It sounds familiar but it is actually not. 

MacGregorreid, M. (2019) Hauntology; experienced through Burial’s ‘Untrue’. Available at: https://marymacgregorreid.wordpress.com/2019/04/26/hauntology-experienced-through-burials-untrue/comment-page-1/ (Accessed: 1 December 2022)

Bryn Jones’ musical project Muslimgauze relies heavily on middle eastern aesthetics, sounds and politically charged messages. From the name to the rhythms to the cover arts I was quite surprised to read that Jones is not muslim himself nor he never went to the Middle East. 

The two songs we are close-listening to which are Oil Prophets (Pt 1, 2, 3) and Tariq Aziz both mixes traditional middle eastern percussion with breakbeat elements. Tariq Aziz has almost a broken rhythm pattern which makes tape stops, glitches and filters out at times followed by middle eastern percussion and strings. Even though the track follows a repetitive drum programming it still has an ambient feeling to it in terms of structure and minimal chord progression. Oil Prophets (Pt 1, 2, 3) is a bit more of a progressive song in terms of production and structure. I can hear some Arabic vocals while also hearing samples and sounds of darbuka a traditional Turkish/Persian percussion. After following a more rhythmic and static structure the track comes into full power with pads and strings around 13 minute mark. The music is quite cinematic and atmospheric in my opinion. 

As a Middle-Eastern myself I don’t really understand the full intentions of musicians and artists who centre these specific aesthetics and political messages as the biggest part of their work. While I can appreciate the provocation and activism, one can not stop thinking about the Western Orientalism these themes and subjects are vulnerable to.

Jones explains his project’s origins as a response to the Israeli invasion of Lebanon and heavily uses this theme around his music. I personally can not find any relation to the tracks’ titles and the musical content that they have. Although I appreciate some of his work and how he infuses many different elements in his music, I can’t help but think about the real motives behind this music. It comes off as a weird obsession a British musician had from the comfort of his home to me and comes off as really weird that he would build an entire discography and aesthetic around these topics and imagery without being part of it. Another example that comes to mind is 2006’s N.A.T.O. and her debut album Chor Javon. A commentary made in Arabic about the Afghani war by a Russian producer and Russian singer that has no relations to the Middle East nor have ever visited and don’t really know the language of. 

I would be able to really appreciate these kind of works if these artists have actually gone on their way to do active activism and protest in these Middle Eastern countries themselves and get involved in social resistance groups, when it only becomes an aesthetic and a sound I can’t help but register that as a gimmick that sounded and/or looked cool to the artist.

Leath, S. (2013) An introduction to… Muslimgauze. Available at: https://thevinylfactory.com/features/an-introduction-to-muslimgauze/ (Accessed: 16 November 2022)

In 1992 with the ever-growing new sounds, political movements and discourse happening around Techno music and culture Alec Empire with his friends Hanin Elias and MC Carl Crack forms the band Atari Teenage Riot. Born as a protest against the rising number of fascists and neo-nazis in the Techno scene the band takes the Techno sound to new grounds and creates a new sound called ‘Digital Hardcore’ which heavily uses amiga samplers, punk riffs, techno drums and scream vocals in a heavy and condensed form.

The influences of acid, techno and speed core music can be heard in their early music Hetzjagd Auf Nazis! And Sex.

While born within the techno scene Alex Empire creates and pioneers a new sound with the addition of the iconic band member Nic Endo in 1997. 

Their debut Burn Berlin Burn (also known as Delete Yourself) is angry, fast and has a strong message to their audience. Their music mostly talks about a new revolution influenced by the new technologies happening in the scene such as computers and the fast growing media. Their take on the techno sound is much more political and harsh. The album is sample heavy. It is a new merge of noise, industrial and punk music within the techno elements that is quite unique for the time and its scene.

The music rapidly evolves and distances itself from its original techno roots with more releases they create and the more live shows they play and comes into its form, the signature of of ATR that can be called digital-hardcore. Heavy breaks, guitar riffs, noise melodies, samples and a rave aesthetic they become a polarising figure in the scene. Their performance at the Berlin Wall in May 1st, 1999 solidifies them as strong performers and dedicated artists in the eyes of music lovers while they get describes as violence promoters in the eyes of some media and public because of their strong political stance against fascism. 

In some interviews the band members also calls the music that they do ‘Techno-Punk’. Atari Teenage Riot’s influence in today’s music can be heard from Crystal Castles to Machinegirl. I personally also got really inspired by the boldness of their music when I first started to make music. Their newer releases like ‘Is this Hyperreal?’ Or 2015’s ‘Reset’ experiments more and more with electronic music sounds and creates even bigger sonic spheres. ATR still makes music to this day even though they had some fall-outs during 2000s and they still make music with their original signature Atari ST computer while adding new equipments to their set. Alec Empire the frontman says in one interview to the wired: ‘People look at technology as a religion and say, ‘This will solve all our problems.’ I’m very sceptical about that.”

Burton, C. (2011) Atari Teenage Riot frontman Alec Empire on old tech and new music. Available at: https://www.wired.co.uk/article/techno-reboots-the-atari (Accessed: 6 November 2022).

Resident Advisor (no date) ATARI TEENAGE RIOT. Available at: https://ra.co/dj/atariteenageriot/biography (Accessed: 6 November 2022).

Soundsphere (no date) Interview: Atari Teenage Riot. Available at: https://www.soundspheremag.com/features/interview-atari-teenage-riot/ (Accessed: 6 November 2022).

Grace Jones’ 1985 full length Slave to the Rhythm is sexy, cinematic and an overall fantastic experience with a well thought sound, Jones’ sultry vocals and in your face visual aesthetics. 

Her career being huge in Hollywood as a breakout star Grace Jones was always musical and was interested in more conceptual works of album production. She and Horn came together in 1985 to release the iconic album Slave to the Rhythm which became Jones’ most commercially successful album to date released under Horn’s label ZTT Records. 

The album is a crazy journey of including seven different interpretations of one song. All of the tracks on the album represents another side of Jones’ life and story she calls the album a biographical concept piece. The album was first intended for Frankie Goes to Hollywood as their follow up release after Relax but then later was passed on to Grace Jones. 

The album includes R&B, hiphop and jazz influences throughout with big guitar riffs, groovy drums, Jones’ voiceover deep vocals. 

An extensive usage of digital synthesiser Synclavier was apparently made during the making of this album which used FM synthesis. The warmth of the synth can be heard throughout the album.

Operattack which is the weirdest sounding song on the album was made with Horn’s signature style of sampling. He only sampled Grace Jones’ pre-recorded vocals from the album recording sessions for this track in particular. 

I find the whole piece of work to be dark, enticing and experimental in its sense for its time. While there are mellow synth and pad heavy tracks like The Crossing and The Fashion Show, the album makes strong and sharp turns to tracks such as The Frog and The Princess and Jones the Rhythm which showcases a more heavy R&B sound with signature drums and grooves. When it comes together with Grace Jones’ fashion-forward thinking aesthetic world and performances the album shines like a diamond and a masterclass in creativity and innovative sound and storytelling among its similar releases from those years. The production cost more than $385.000 a huge budget for its time. 

When they were first working on the album with a bass guitar, a Roland JX-8P and 808 drums Horn’s collaborator during this album Andy Richards suggested that the chords are just not working well with the music so they flipped over and inverted the notes while giving the melodies a steady rise. The making process of the album was experimental in its core too. 

Even though it was risky and full of experimentations within the studio the lead single Slave to the Rhythm became a huge hit and made official charts all over the world while dominating America. This album further proved how much of a production genius Trevor Horn is and how he came make everything into gold that he touches.

Griffiths, D. (2022) The story of Grace Jones’ Slave to the Rhythm: tempo changes, stacked Roland synth patches and Trevor Horn. Available at: https://www.musicradar.com/news/slave-to-the-rhythm-song-stories (Accessed: 6 November 2022).

Red Bull Music Academy (2018) Trevor Horn talks Buffalo Gals, Grace Jones and Double Dutch | Red Bull Music Academy. April 12 2018. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DR4GwBRWR6Y&ab_channel=RedBullMusicAcademy (Accessed: 6 November 2022)

NEZ’s Turkish Delight and the cross between Western and Middle Eastern sound and aesthetics

Turkish musician and dancer NEZ’s 2002 debut album ‘Turkish Delight’ crosses between the sounds of techno, oriental belly dance music and electronic pop while introducing a never before seen club-girl belly dancer aesthetic in Middle Eastern music. Playing her music and dancing across events right from when she was 18 Nez first started working on the songs and the whole concept by herself. A little later she formed her own band called The Turkish delights. It was not until she was discovered while performing original material to the prominent yet infamous Turkish music producer Erol Köse around 2001 that she started to record these ideas which would later be compiled in the debut album ‘Turkish Delight’.

NEZ was an alien to the Turkish audiences. She seemed very confident in her performance style which was adapted from traditional belly dancing routines and Ottoman Harem aesthetics mixed with well known traditional melodies on top of electro-pop and techno productions supported by her smooth and sultry English and Turkish vocals. What she did was a statement that was misunderstood and panned when it was first out even though she managed to become an overnight sensation and topped the charts with her first single ‘Sakın Ha’. 

NEZ never officially released another piece of work and moved to London where a part of her family lives after the promotional run of the album. Because of the provocative sound and image she portrayed she faced multiple threats and mostly became a controversial figure in the media. I find this album to be way ahead of its time and can see the reasons of backlash. First and foremost NEZ deconstructs what it means to be a female performer by completely ignoring the traditional image of a belly dancer who mostly in Turkish media is just a dancer who doesn’t talk or do anything else but only there to entertain men and makes it a popstar who sings, produces and becomes her own unique thing. I want to talk about how much of a forward thinking feminist move this is and not just for music. Secondly the album creates a sonic atmosphere where traditional and melancholic Turkish scales mixes with uptempo techno and electronic music productions which was never before done by any artist to that date on this scale. While being innovative the work was mostly misunderstood and under appreciated, the audiences couldn’t really understand what this all meant. I will talk about the innovations and thought that went into the musical production of the album.

Lastly I will put all of these points under ‘syncretism’ which is a theme mentioned in the album. Syncretism means to merge and or assimilate traditions together and creating something new out of it. This is mostly with mixing and merging theology and culture. One of the examples include the 16th century emperor Mughal Akbar who created a new belief system by mixing traditions and elements from Islam, Hinduism and Christianity. One of the final songs on the album being called ‘Ethnic Synthetic’ is not a total coincidence. NEZ sings over a techno beat while the song is a cover of ‘Popcorn’ composed by Gershon Kingsley one of the first songs to be recorded and released with Moog synthesiser with traditional melodies NEZ talks over the song ‘dreaming is the only way to success’.

Musique concrète caught my attention immediately after reading and hearing about it in class. A genre and music making technique using recorded sounds and tape music techniques that goes back to 1950, an experimental way of making music for its day. While searching on albums using this specific technique I encountered with a famous Turkish electronic music composer, İlhan Mimaroğlu and his 2 track album ‘Tract’ that was released in 1975. Its full title being Tract: A Composition Of Agitprop Music For Electromagnetic Tape the album features recorded sounds of piano, synthesisers, radio signals and vocals from Tülay German -one of my favourite Turkish singers of all time- under the alias Tuly Sand.

The whole album carries a theme of pro-left wing political messages that was inspired by Turkish political poet Nazım Hikmet and Russian Revolution propaganda which can be seen in the title of the work. Agitprop means propaganda and originated from Soviet Russia used to describe popular media. 

The album is dark and almost has a feeling of walking through the streets and empty halls of a post-war city. First track ‘Part 1’ opens with a noise drone sound that is supported by French vocals that resembles almost chanting and/or dictating. The almost 19 minute track takes quite the journey with samples from radio, Tülay German’s vocals in English, French and Turkish. Part 2 which is nearly 17 minutes long is almost like a continuation of whatever happened in Part 1 this time with even a darker message and more experimental synthesiser and tape recordings sounds. Most of the track is arrhythmic and drones supported by voice recordings that gives updates about war in countries like Turkey, France and the Soviet. Around 13:40 the track melts into a beautiful and romantic ballad with German’s classic vocal stylings that can be heard in her recordings, haunting and mesmerising. German’s vocals follow an ambient sound of keys and single string samples then ends with a piano chord. 

I find the whole piece of work to be very theatrical, dramatic and storytelling. A unique feature which I can’t find in earlier musique concrète records. The work takes the listener on a journey in politics, emotions and melancholic war scenery. 

Mimaroğlu, i. (1975) TRACT. In Tract: A Composition of Agitprop Music for Electromagnetic Tape [Vinyl liner notes]. United States: Folkways Records.

A genre I was always interested in but couldn’t really get into has always been Turkish Arabesque music. Turkish Arabesque is heavy, experimental and bigger than life in sound. The reason I’ve always avoided it was the oversaturated vocal stylings and deep dark lyrics that makes the genre what it is. 

It is almost a wave of melancholy through Arabic melodies, traditional Turkish instruments such as bağlama and darbuka and big, in your face visuals. 

One of the most prominent voices in Turkish Arabesque is Bergen, a female powerhouse vocalist and musician that became famous with her haunting melodies and shocking life story which unveiled in the eyes of the public media. Bergen took the title of ‘Acıların Kadını’ which simply means ‘The Woman of Pain’. She was attacked publicly by her manager and ex-husband with a bottle of acid on her face but she kept on performing and writing songs. Her album ‘Acıların Kadını’ which came out after the attack in 1986 tackles some heavy themes while being so magically haunting.

Fourth track of the album ‘Benim İçin Üzülme’ is an arabesque staple. The song opens with strings that follow a traditional Turkish makam chord in minor. Bergen’s vocals come into the track almost as another layer of strings and a choir of men joins her in post-chorus. The song structure is simple but it makes such an impact that almost glues the listener to its core. 

Track 11 ‘Bi Çare’ is a direct cry to God asking for help. The vocal melodies in this track are complex as they travel in many different runs and belts. The instrumentation follows the album’s typical arabesque sound with the same instruments mentioned above. 

Lyrically the whole album is heavy even when the melodies and the tempo changes to major chords and sound more peppy like in track 10 she still is mourning over what her life was and what it could have been if she has never meant her ex-husband.

Özgür, İ. (2006) Arabesk Music in Turkey in the 1990s and Changes in National Demography, Politics, and Identity, Turkish Studies, 185.

In her work Sonic Meditations, Pauline Oliveros introduces some practices that can be done with an ensemble or a group aiming to understand, listen and meditate through the power of sound and music. Taking sonic energy and its transmission to the core of her meditations these activities attempt us to become one with the energy of sound with erasing our contemporary attempts and environments when we consume sound and music and takes us to more universal and primal practises to do so. Oliveros mentions that these meditations follow a simple procedure of four steps that include; making sounds, actively imagining sounds, listening to present sounds and remembering them. 

Through reading the meditations one can agree that these are very essential steps in admiring and understating the sound and the vibrations that surround us she creates these activities that almost isolates our core vibration with the sound that surrounds us which I find really interesting as it also reminds me of teachings and practices of shamanic rituals that took part over Anatolia and Middle East. Accessibility of some of these practices are questionable such as step seven: Sonic Rorschach. In which the group comes together in a darkened space where there is a noise generator and they lay down on the ground and try to find the source of this noise through meditation in a search to understand and feel frequencies and intensities of light and sound. 

Meditation eighteen specifically caught my attention as Oliveros encourages us to listen to a sound until we don’t recognise it anymore. It really reminded me of a time when I was a little kid and I was repeating the word ‘Çekmece’ which means drawer in Turkish and as I kept repeating the word out loud I’ve realised that it lost its meaning and I no longer could remember what it means or how it sounds like. Reading Oliveros giving this as a part of her meditations showed me once more that the whole of this work and its intend is to turn us to our most primal and early stages of understanding sound, linguistics and mental capacity of how we work with vibrations and repetition. 

Oliveros, P. (2005) Deep Listening: A Composer’s Sound practice. United States: Deep Listening Publications. 

TEDxtalks (2015) The difference between hearing and listening. Available at: https://youtu.be/_QHfOuRrJB8 (Accessed: 30 September 2022).