RUI COSTA AND FRIENDS

Half artist release and half compilation the CD features the original composition by Costa plus reworks by Marc Behrens, Gregory Büttner, Bill Jarboe, Pali Meursault and Maile Colbert. The idea for the piece first came to me in 2005, when I was invited to develop a sound project with the city of Lisbon as its theme. I decided to wander through the city, making a series of sound recordings using a pair of binaural microphones. What I concluded from these recordings was that, more than capturing the sound of the place or its "atmosphere", they reflected a lot about me: my decisions of where to go, what places to avoid, how fast to walk, how long to linger in one place… preconceived ideas of what I wanted to be captured on tape. Later I followed up on this idea by introducing an element of "sonic sightseeing". I grabbed a tourist guide of Lisbon, walked along the recommended hiking routes and made recordings with binaural and shotgun microphones. I wrote down my impressions, states of mind, mental associations and decisions and then mapped the recorded sounds against these notes, considering them as "instructions" or "cues" for a sound composition. I suppose that the experience that tourists get from a city is in great measure determined by the randomness of these almost unconscious impressions, of a permanent mapping out of what they see against their desires, preconceived ideas, memories, etc. All in all, my intention was to convert this process into a method for sound composition using field recordings. (Rui Costa, 2009) (label info)