John Kannemberg — A Sound Map Art Institute of Chicago
The single sixty minute track flows through fifty two index points, with each last around a minute or a piece. So we start our journey with the sound of Bucket drummers outside the institute, then we find ourselves moving through first one area to another with-in the institute- taking in: snippets of guides talks, footsteps, distant chatter, maintenance workers, peoples conversions, people dismounting from elevators, fan & building sounds, directions from staff, security guard radio chatter, workman carrying through artworks, distant alarms, sounds from inside the cafeteria, buzzing of electric signs, etc. With the track ending with us exiting out of the modern wing ground floor bookstore into the street.
The track moves on from one rewarding set of sounds to another, and clearly Kannemberg has a keen ear to cut, edit & move onto the next area of recording- so the track never lulls into tedium or bland-ness.
The release comes with a 12 page booklet, which takes in two pages explaining the tracks concept. A list of each of the index points, a map of journey inside the Institute, and a few random pictures of staircases & signs from with-in the institute.
It’s always nice to be surprised & impressed by a release you’re not expecting much from, and that’s exactly what this CDR managed to do. So if your interested in journey based field recordings, this is well worth a look…and apparently Mr Kannemberg has done similar sound maps in the past, so I may well check those out too.