It is one of the greatest mysteries to me, why do people in Russia have so dramatically lost their interest in recording audio, or probably never had any particular affection towards the genre.
Despite having a flourishing tradition of DIY electronics in the Soviet past, formed not only as a fancy or hobby but as a bare necessity thing, not many consider taking a portable recording set outside a good way of spending one’s free time.
Things have changed. 8 mm footage swept away by the video, photography getting that big with the cats as the only creatures on Earth not to have a personal DSLR handy. But capturing sound isn’t a habit still.
Some sort of renaissance is desperately needed. It had to happen one day, and in the meantime 2010 and 2011 already saw more and more Russian field recordists emerging and even publishing their material online. Two such projects came into sight lately, one of them is a sound map from the South and the other one is a sound blog form the North with nearly 1500 kilometers in between.
Zheleznogorsk sound map is created by the local newspaper and is currently on hiatus – but I hope it’s won’t take long for The Zhelezhogorsk Echo staff to get back to work on it soon.
There are four sounds spots available on the map at the moment, some may say the effort is too humble but let’s see. This southern industrial city is famous for the amounts of micaceous iron ore hidden deep below, and the chances are high that the sounds of the world above would become equally famous soon.
From the city of seafarers, fishermen and polar explorers comes the dooom_trooper blog. He records the sounds of his native Arkhangelsk. Not much could be gathered about the blog owner from his Livejournal profile, so let the sounds speak for themselves. One of my favourites is the ambiance of the Chainaya Lozhka tea-house, a lovely shelter for the frostbitten Nordic recordist.
Published April 10th, 2011.