I am absolutely loving this video by Nomadic Ambience. A walk through some streets and backstreets of Tokyo in the rain. The binaural sound works best through headphones.
It gets better in the last quarter as the rain subsides – the environmental sounds are less drowned out and you get a better sense of the 3D audio field.
12 minutes 10 seconds. Headphones recommended.
New video. 33 minutes. Headphones recommended.
Back in 2007 I made a series of 60 second ‘still photos’ that I called Minutes. I recorded them on a little Canon Ixus so on today’s high-res displays they look terrible. YouTube existed in 2007 but I didn’t upload them there, partly because I wanted them presented more like photographs. Instead I put them on a dedicated website as Flash video (FLV) clips, but the site disappeared when I changed servers at some point. And Flash is dead of course. So they’ve gone*.
A number of people said they appreciated them at the time but I was arguably ahead of the curve: today YouTube has countless hours of ambience, ASMR or generally atmospheric videos many of which are just audio. I love all of the above. I often listen to light rain or similar, combined with some drone / ambient music while I’m working.
Also a big fan of Starship Engine Rumble, incidentally.
Anyway, preamble over. I have lots of audio gear and a camera, and I felt like making some similar stuff again. These are more about the sound than the video so one minute is not long enough. I’ve done a couple of tests (12 and 9 minutes respectively). An hour each would be a nice round number, so aiming for that eventually.
(* They’re in a backup zip file somewhere, I never delete anything)
Further to the previous post, here’s some new music! As usual it’s on SoundCloud which is embedded below.
Just under that is the Bandcamp release where you can buy an uncompressed WAV copy (sounds much better) for just £3.
This mix was recorded in May 2000 in Leeds, on my trusty Technics 1210s. This is 5 years on from the last one posted so the mixing is pretty respectable by this stage.
We start off with some electro tracks from Simulant, Anthony Rother, and UR, then shift into 4-4 techno via Dave Angel's gorgeous remix of Model 500's 'I Wanna Be There'. On the B-side it's more melodic with tracks from (Weatherall side project) Deanne Day and Plaid among others.
Restored from cassette March 2017
Listen here: mixcloud.com/_ade/firstperson-dj-mix-may-2000-from-tape/
Another old very old DJ mix recovered from tape. This was done on my belt drive Ariston decks in 1995. The levels are all over the place and there's more dodgy scratching and and ill conceived back-spins! But no happy hardcore this time (you may or may not be pleased to hear).
Here is a track I have recently finished:
Also if you enjoy my musical efforts, you may like to follow me on Bandcamp
New music under the firstperson name:
https://soundcloud.com/firstpersonmusic/sets/loops-2016-07
I've put together a new ambient mix. It was recorded live and then tweaked in Ableton. The field recordings were captured with my ancient (but trusty!) MZ-R50 MiniDisc recorder and a stereo condenser mic.
Listen to it here or go to the Mixcloud page. If you have an account it would be great if you could give it a like and a share to help it can reach a wider audience.
© 2023 Ade Rowbotham Ltd