Composer Janek Schaefer drew from the work of John Cage, DJ Shadow, The Orb, Marina Abramović, Steve Reich, Chris Watson, and so many other greats to create this powerfully evocative and weird 90 minute mix. A former architect, Scahefer has masterfully designed a haunting, expansive environment of found sound. This is the way, step inside...

Schaefer also prepared a complementary essay and annotated tracklist for the mix. From The Vinyl Factory:

I loved how sound creates images that you cannot see, capturing an impression of spaces and places that can only be revealed again thought playback over time...

This C-90 style mixtape, entitled ‘New Dimensions In Time, Space and Place’, is a meander through my physical collection of works that have inspired me over the last 36 years, and I still enjoy. The loosely connecting themes explore found sound, ready-mades, collage, samples, sound design, sculpture, performance, field recordings, sonic art, appropriation, alteration, and accidents. The context of these sounds brings meaning to the works, and our understanding of that context brings the work to life when listening to it.

The National Sound Library of Mexico has found an audio recording of what is most likely painter Frida Kahlo reading her essay "Portrait of Diego" in the early 1950s. It was recorded for the pilot episode of radio show El Bachiller. From The Guardian:

The episode featured a profile of Kahlo’s artist husband Diego Rivera. In it, she reads from her essay Portrait of Diego, which was taken from the catalogue of a 1949 exhibition at the Palace of Fine Arts, celebrating 50 years of Rivera’s work...

In the press release, Mexico’s secretary of culture, Alejandra Frausto, said if it is indeed Kahlo’s voice – a claim which authorities continue to investigate – it could be the only audio recording of the artist that exists...

“Frida’s voice has always been a great enigma, a never-ending search,” (library national director Pável) Granados told a press conference. “Until now, there had never been a recording of Frida Kahlo.”

The British Library has a collection of 268 nature recordings made in the first half of the 20th century. The recordings date back to the 1930s and include the songs of birds, noises made by large vertebrates like camels and panda bears, and even full-environment background sounds like this 1938 recording of an Afrotropical environment. Jeezus, the jungle is loud. (Via Alice Bell) Read the rest

Carnegie Mellon University's Auditory Lab has a huge collection of high-quality audio recordings of random sounds—from a marble dropped onto sheet metal, to bubble wrap being popped, to crumpling newspaper, to the sound of a sponge being squeezed out over empty tupperware. I trust you all will come up with fun uses for this stuff. At the Annals of Improbable Research you can hear one of the lab's sloshing sounds. It is a very good slosh. (Via Marc Abrahams) Read the rest