A link to my past

Aug 29, 2022, 12:25 PM

"A lot of my work focuses on recontextualising sound, image and memory, and the materials I use (other than samples) often tend to be toys, learner keyboards, tiny joke drumkits, etc., so this particular recording seemed a good fit to me.

"I have a personal relationship with the recording in that I played A Link To The Past on Game Boy during a few long car journeys when I was fairly young, perhaps 5. I recall being scared by it at points - the dungeons and the bosses were impossibly difficult for me and my infant reflexes - and I have some recollection of the prayer sound from the recording.

"So I wanted to take this sound that I associate with being slightly unnerved, and way out of my depth, and attempt to recontextualise it into something joyful by splicing in this very sugary, major-key track.

"I started by cutting the sample up, and reconstituting it into two layered, phased pulses that evolve gradually. I then overlaid a track I'd made using samples from unused recordings of my own work, as well as some vocals through a small megaphone toy."

Composition by Shit Creek. 

This is part of the Obsolete Sounds project, the world’s biggest collection of disappearing sounds and sounds that have become extinct – remixed and reimagined to create a brand new form of listening. Explore the whole project at https://citiesandmemory.com/obsolete-sounds

IMAGE: Dave or Atox, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons