Sound/Library Edition 2022
This info and download is for the 2022 edition. Check back here for more info on sound/library édition 2025, or get word of it in the h̸e̸m̸ newsletter.
Sound/Library assembles seven collections of sounds selected to address various questions and ideas about the origin, production, and materiality of sampled audio. It exists as both an archaeology of labor and a labor-performance, but moreover as an act of social practice. In the latter respect, as a producer's toolkit, Sound/Library has been put to practical use in a number of works and recordings over the years. Sound/Library is free to download.
8 x Ableton Live `.alp` files + 1862 `.wav` files
`.alp` were made with Ableton Live 11 Standard
16.98 Gb `.zip` file (29.47 Gb unpacked)
Contents
Post Studio— Sounds selected from the detritus of studio recording and production; the recording studio as a site of labor archaeology. This collection of defects, scraps, and material recordings produces a messy audio forensics running counter to the studio's clean production flow, one in which the laboring artist is self-supplanted by the artist-as-commodity: Inhalations edited out of vocal takes (here provided by Lucrecia Dalt), noise reduction artefacts, between-takes banter, various features of the work environment like noisy cables, humming and hissing equipment, flapping insulation, squeaky double-sealed doors, and gently sliding cinderblocks.
Runout Grooves— A play on the indexicality of sampling, attributing the hypnotic inner-ring crackle of a vinyl record to the artist whose music was pressed on it: Missy Elliot, Dean Blunt, Edith Piaf, Culture Club, among others.
Destroyed Piano— Originally released in 2017, this was the first collection in Sound/Library. Prepared piano was an avatar of the avant-garde's flouting —without completely or successfully overturning— tradition. Discovered in an advanced state of decay in the banquet hall of Villa di Ulignano near Florence, the instrument's "preparation" was not so much artistic strategy, playing cards and magnets, as bacteria, moisture, corrosion, and neglect. As a digital "replica instrument", it snapshots a moment in a much longer process of decay, re-inaugurating a tension between "intention" and "the natural".
Solitudes— Tracks imported from a distressed promotional LP for Dan Gibson's "Solitudes" early 1980's series of high-end field recordings, found lingering in a second-hand clothing store. Layered reversals —reliquary and industry, the unmediated and the appropriative, the experiential ethos of field recording and the reclaiming impulse of sampling.
Berlin Piano— A wheelhorse of the Rundfunk der DDR, documented in three preparations: Rice Paper, Cinefoil, and Glass. This Steinway A's unusually gentle timbral structure is portrayed by 11 renowned microphones. In addition, a thorough study of material, percussive, and gestural work in and around the body of the instrument decenter the "digital replica" ethos.
Bendir, Darbuka, Flower Pot— A frame drum can sometimes be heard on the streets of Kreuzberg at the start of a wedding ceremony, supplying the rhythmic pulse to a solo zurna. Accomplished performer Hogir Göregen came over for a casual session one Kotti afternoon, bringing a beautifully-made Bendir and another drum, a Darbuka. An empty flower vase became a spontaneously-added third instrument in this session.
Kreuzberg, NYE— Berlin's Kreuzberg borough is famous for getting blanketed with fireworks and explosives —legal, quasi-legal, and otherwise— every year around midnight on December 31st. The bombs fly every which way (not just up) to create an immersive experience, to say the least. This pack captures the experience in 2016 and 2017. One, from a high vantage point on a 9th floor balcony overlooking Kottbusser Tor; the other, from Oranienstraße, down on the street.
Seurat MIDI— A chance-and-probability device for Ableton Live that runs in free hardware vendor tie-in editions of the software. Named "Seurat MIDI" after French pointilist painter Georges Seurat because its metaphor of "spraying" MIDI notes onto a scale like dots on a canvas, with adjustable width and flow density. It was well-suited to exploring and composing with Sound/Library collections, assembling and weaving individual sounds into drones and textures.