Let Me Out! Let Me Out! (BoschSGS43T92 Dishwasher)

There are 35 species of butterfly that are resident or are regular migrants here. This is relatively low compared to the rest of Europe due to our climate being wetter and colder for longer but also due to the fact that there isn’t a huge altitudinal range to our landscape. We have four species that overwinter in their adult form (as opposed to larvae etc.) The ambient temperature is generally how they know to wake up. Some butterflies, particularly the Small
Tortoiseshell, hide away in attics or under stairs, anywhere they can find a secluded cool dry spot. The cool temperature puts them to sleep. However, increased use of generalised central heating, along with increasingly unstable seasons due to global warming, has meant that our butterfly population is getting confused. They often try to fly away when it is too cold outside where they then become victims to predators as they fall asleep in exposed
locations. Sometimes they exhaust themselves trying to fly through a window and subsequently die due to starvation.
This piece starts with a Small Tortoiseshell butterfly trying to escape, it cannot get past the glass of the window. The dishwasher creeps in, gradually getting louder. We can no longer hear our fluttering friend. A rhythmic sloshing becomes evident behind the machine noise of the motor. It is hypnotic. A second, higher tone creeps in. The sloshing seems to separate from the droning of the motor(s). Gradually the second tone fades away but is replaced by a different tone, still higher than the root pitch. Slowly other tones join in, all the time the
watery, rhythmic, sloshing continues in the background.
A lower tone joins around half way through and we hear the fullest range of tones in the piece. Slowly the higher pitches fade, exposing the full breadth of the low pitches. Water sounds become more noticeable, clicks and sudden starts and stops as the machine cycles through its program. Abruptly with an unnatural suddenness all the drones fall away. The illusion shattered as we can clearly hear that it is a dishwasher, we can hear the sound of the detergent tablet being released, the clattering of plates…
Gradually this fades away and we can hear our red and brown patterned friend still fluttering.
The window opens with a click and squeak, the sounds of the late spring garden rushing in.
The Small Tortoiseshell finds the opening and flies away.

An Aga Would Be Quieter (Beko KTC611K Oven)

The oven is one of our most basic appliances. We have made ovens in one form or another for thousands of years. It is how so much of the food we eat is cooked. But electric ovens seem to be furthest removed from our natural environment. Along with ‘Mains Hum (ft. EMF pulse by Electric Fence)’ this is possibly the most punishing listening experience. The oven has very little pitch information in its sound. It is unique in the series in that the root tone carries all the way through. The barrage is relentless, growing over a period of more than 24 minutes until finally it recedes, leaving us with the sound of the birds outside the kitchen window.

Mains Hum (ft. EMF pulse by Electric Fence)

Within this group of pieces, it could be argued that the source material used for this piece is the purest example of environmental noise pollution.
The basic recording is of the mains hum emanating from a poorly grounded guitar amplifier. I had noticed that a music system in a spare room of my home had a very faint mains hum.
This is something that I have often noticed in other locations such as friends houses, restaurants, hotel rooms, as well as in my own home. But attempts to record it quickly showed up the problem, which was that the hum was too faint to really capture it effectively in isolation. The solution was to bring a small guitar amplifier into the room and use the gain stage of it to amplify the mains hum. This was immediately effective, so effective in fact that
it picked up the EMF pulse caused by a neighbours electric fence 10 metres away in a field next-door.

It is a harsh sound. Unforgiving, brutal. The clicking of the fence is clearly audible over the hum. The voicing of the guitar amplifiers speaker cabinet giving a nasal quality to the hum.
As other variants of the root tone are introduced, the clicks from the fence set up an erratic rhythm. Slight phasing starts to happen as well. I am reminded of the soundtracks to old science fiction films and TV series that I had watched as a child on BBC television.
Gradually as the piece builds, the phasing effect almost gives an illusion of changing pitch. This is joined by a rhythmic pulse, fatter and more engine-like. The pitches slowly fade in and out, but as each pitch makes its final exit it cuts off abruptly, the part it was playing all the more noticeable because of its abrupt departure. Finally we are once again left with the basic tone, the clicks and then, blissfully, silence.

Beko WTG941B1W (Washing Machine)

I had set out to find a continuous Drone sound in each recording. My plan was to then work this up into a strictly drone centred piece of acousmatic musique concrete for each appliance. However, the more I listened to the recordings I had made of the washing machine, the more I wondered if this was being too restrictive.
Was I trying to bend existing material into a direction that I was forcing upon it?
Would it not be better to truly listen to the raw recording and let it suggest the direction of travel?
I realised that, whereas with the other pieces in this series I was manipulating the recordings to conceal their origin and associative qualities, in this case I had a machine with a very recognisable ‘song’. In most houses the sound of a washing machine working through its cycles is something associated with childhood, laundry day. The noise, the sight of the clothes going around, the screaming crescendo of the spin cycle… Although they are gradually becoming quieter in more recent times they are still a very noisy household appliance.
The piece starts with a typical clothes washing machine signature; a series of short rotations. These then settle into a continuous cycle of droning noise with water sloshing overtones. Other elements of a harmonic series come into play; a minor third, a fifth and so on … they fade in and out. As time passes, interesting clicks and other short sounds echo over and back across the sound field. A delay effect is in play. A low hum slowly creeps in an Octave below the group of tones we have heard up until now.
Suddenly a stop…similar to a club track it drifts into reverb, a series of panning false starts heavily effected and with a jump we are into the spin cycle. Each tone layering in one after the other giving a slight Shepard – Risset effect. This continues for several minutes before the familiar slowing down and drop in pitch as the cycle ends and drains.

A click as the door unlocks… the song is over and we can hear the birds once more.

Mr. Cellophane (Russell Hobbs – Microwave)

What kitchen appliance could be more commonplace than a microwave?
Even in kitchens that have no other domestic appliances such as those in office canteens, there is always a microwave.
This starts with a field recording made in a rural garden in County Cork. Over a period of 2 decades it has been returned to a more natural state, no pesticides or chemical fertilisers have been used during this time. Many native breed trees and shrubs are growing in this garden. This has resulted in an increase in birdlife and insect life to a substantial degree.
A bee zips across the soundscape, numerous birds create a raucous wash of sound. At one point a pair of magpies get particularly exercised about some aspect of their day. We are actually quite close to the road, though it is a rural back road, so occasionally a car drifts past.
After a while, we notice a low tone, gradually increasing in volume. The microwave is coming. Gradually the sounds of the garden recede into the background before disappearing completely. Initially we can only hear one tone. Slowly a second tone creeps in on one side,
followed by a third and fourth sounds.
The slowly drifting nature of this piece is hypnotic. We shift from major to minor triads almost imperceptibly. Octaves above and below the root tone come and go. Occasionally a rhythmic rattle is just about audible above the din. Originally this was the rattling of the rotating glass
plate inside the microwave. The absolute barrage of sound still appears to be somehow soft in character. It is easy to get lost in this piece, but is it doing you or your hearing any good?
Is it doing you or your food any good? Gradually the other sounds fade away. All we are left with is the original drone of the microwave on its own and, of course, the ‘ding’!