bj nilsen: eye of the microphone

BJ Nilsen's fourth solo album for Touch is a surreal audio rendition of the sounds of the city of London recorded and mixed 2012-2013. A sound and recording artist born in Sweden, Nilsen primarily uses field recordings and electronic composition as a working method and has worked for film, television, theatre, dance and as sound designer. "In 2012 I received a scholarship from the Leverhulme Trust for a one-year Artist in Residency at the UCL Urban Laboratory in London, to introduce sound as an art practice to urban scholars and students. As part of my research I decided to dérive the city. I spent full days and sometimes nights sweeping the streets and its interiors for sound - walking and listening with no route or intention. A city without sound does not exist. Every location, passageway, alley, road, park, and pub contains its own world of isolated sound events and patterns - the sound of a shopping bag caught by the wind on the asphalt of a busy street when a bus passes by. What seems to be merely a bus is also a cacophony of sounds, a sound world in itself: hydraulics, breaks, interior noise, honking, public announcements, humans, rolling bottles, cell phones, mp3 players. The rattle of an air-conditioning unit in an old pub toilet gradually develops its broken down sound over many years, creating a raga for it own demise. Nobody seems to hear it. Is it there? The choice of sound varies; its a personal selection, some sounds made it into this composition, many hours of recording didn't. Sound composition can alter space and time and transform a specific location and experience into an imaginary world." -- BJ Nilsen