Jake Tilson > info

Fascinating Noise by ADAM LEVY	Right now I'm aware of the low, gently oscillating sound of the laptop computer on which I write this and the metallic rhythmic chuntering of a train passing by my window. A car swooshes by the front of the house - the Doppler effect of its approach and its retreat so rhythmically familiar that it could be the sound of my own breathing. These are some of the sounds of my house. You'll have yours, as particular to your time and space as the whorl of your fingerprint
	Most sounds on CDs, LPs, TVs and increasingly PCs, is manufactured sound. TV goes to enormous lengths to either amplify and enhance wanted sounds or to cut out background noise that distracts from the main action. A whole industry of sound dubbing is built around this manipulation of sound and the technological arsenal directed at eliminating unwanted noises - a cough, a car or a crowd - is extraordinary. I've witnessed the elimination of an intake of breath and a mispronounced "s" in "solution" restored to its full sibilant strength - and that, I know, is only child's play. The point is this: most media favour manufactured sound - it strives for sameness, smoothness, directed, close and focused sound. But what Jake Tilson has done on this CD is to opt for difference. The sounds here are diverse, unfocused, sometimes distant and rough. They are anything but directed.
	When you listen to the sounds on City Picture Fiction, you have to consciously retune your ear. It's not easy. We are so used to hearing formatted sound - the "hook" of a melody, a rhythmic backbeat, or a seductive vocal glide into some initial heart-thumping notes - that it's a shock to have all those expectations frustrated. These sounds are raw sounds; except for the process of selection they have not been altered.
	John Cage, in his most influential text, The Future of Music: Credo (first delivered as a lecture in Seattle in 1937 but not published until 1958), wrote the following: "Wherever we are, what we hear is mostly noise. When we ignore it, it disturbs us. When we listen to it, we find it fascinating." I've now listened to parisnew yorklondon half a dozen times in radically different locations - a hotel in West Hollywood, in a garden in Peckham, London, on an airplane above Utah and in a hallway in the East Village in New York - and I've grown accustomed to it like I would a more conventional piece of music. The sounds of the oceanic, echoing rush of a grand public space such as the Louvre is almost narcotically calming. I can now recognise the different phrases of the piece as if it were a composed score: here come those unhurried footsteps across the solid-sounding Parisian marble floor and there is that fragment of French. In the New York segment of the piece, the words "take care" always hint at a sense of ending, just like a musical phrase might; it prepares the listener for the last movement and the end of that segment of the work. To use Cage's terminology, this is fascinating noise.
	But remember: these recordings are not composed. Our brains will try to impose order on these fascinating noises - seeking endings and repetitions and turns of phrase. And our brains will be successful; we will find meaning. That's an important aspect of the beauty of these recordings. It's why I think of them as being sound equivalents to Duchamp's readymades- these sounds become art works not because they have an inherent value but because we are willing to hear them as art works as a result of their having been selected for us. One of the significant roles of the artist today is to act as a selector; Jake has scanned an enormous number of possibilities, and chosen to draw our attention to these particular sounds. Here he is working as a maker/curator. A curator of sound.
	Cage looked forward to a quartet for "explosive motor, wind, heart beat, and landslide". In Music From Afar we hear a wedding reception in New Delhi, a harmonica on New York's E train and bells in Pushkar, to name some of the recordings. But mixed in with these sounds we also hear New Delhi taxis, the sound of New York's electronic subway bell and the chirp of some of Pushkar's birds. In other words, woven into these recordings are surrounding sounds, the background "noise" that is normally eliminated from mainstream recordings. This is another aspect of the beauty of these works; they are humanly chaotic and they retain a highly distinctive sense of place.
	Because the recordings are so specific in terms of both time and place they have the effect of making me more conscious of the fascinating noise around me now. In a wonderful against-the-grain way, the sophisticated technology which has been deployed for you to hear these sounds - from recording equipment, CD manufacturing machines and the Discman or boom box or CD component on which you'll spin this disc - will hopefully work to make you more attuned to the complexly simple phenomena of the moment: the profound richness of the now.