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Listening to the Landscape 23: Reflections

Matthew Shenton

As the last summer warmth of September faded into a very autumnal October, the funding for the Listening to the Landscape: Holbrook project came to an end. After ten months of sonic experimentation, artistic mentoring and sound collection it is time for a period of evaluation, reflection and forward planning.

Throughout 2024 I have received mentoring from four exceptional sound art practitioners in how to develop my practice, how to work with communities on sound projects, how to better contextualise and present my work and how to develop new artistic approaches to using sound art.


This mentoring gave me the skills and confidence to work with my local community on the Holbrook sound project researching how the soundscape of our village has changed and discussing our favourite village sounds. It was a privilege to hear villagers reminisce about long-gone squeaky roundabouts at the park and how the noisy engine of Staggy’s fruit and veg van announced his arrival on your street. Memories flooded in and sparked conversations between residents, and I used this invaluable social history both as a stimulus to investigate new sound locations within the village and to recreate the remembered sounds as foley for my compositions.

The project gave me protected time to develop and experiment with a new compositional technique that uses cartographical information for compositional arrangements and live performance. Information taken from maps such as the position of contour lines, rights of way, wooded areas and water features are extracted and transcribed to form a graphic score that shapes the arrangement of modified field recordings and the village foley sounds. This technique formed the basis for an album, a geolocated soundwalk and three site-specific performances of my work to new audiences in performance spaces new to me.

Through experimenting with new recording equipment and receiving training in field recording techniques I produced a podcast that shares my local village soundscape to a global audience. Over three hours of recordings are now available that showcase: natural sounds from a rural hedgerow to the ultrasonic chirps of underwater invertebrates, and human sounds from the drone of the sewerage plant to the Tuesday morning refuse collection.

The podcast has attracted listeners from Germany, Brazil, India, Ukraine, Austria, Kazakhstan, Spain, Portugal, Australia, Hungary, Russia, Romania, the U.S.A and (thankfully) Ipswich/Holbrook.  I also used my new field recording skills to collaborate with an artist in Ireland by submitting recordings I made to their project, and my recording of juvenile swifts dive-bombing my studio window were included in an album release.


The Future

The idea to explore the changing soundscape of Holbrook has been with me for many years, and I am lucky to have been supported and encouraged along the way by my family, community and my SPILL residency in 2023. This 2024 development period has given me the skills and confidence to move forward and plan out how I would now like my practice to develop over the next twelve months.


I will continue to work with my local community and have been involved in planning and programming a ‘mini green arts festival’ in the village in November 2024 that will showcase my practice and work. Should this be successful, a larger scale festival is planned for 2025.


I am hoping to continue to work with three of my four mentors on a range of projects, and tentative plans have already begun on a project in Southend with two of them that will take place in 2025.


Much of the work and approaches to sharing my field recordings are sustainable and will continue (such as the podcast). I aim to approach other communities with a streamlined project that will explore local soundscapes throughout Suffolk (and hopefully beyond the county).


Overall, I feel that Developing Your Creative Practice has helped me to progress from an isolated artist, into a practitioner with new technical and artistic ability within a strong network of collaborators. I would like to thank Stuart Bowditch, Jo Kennedy, Kelly Ann Buckley and Loula Yorke for their support and mentoring throughout 2024. I also extend my thanks to the past and present community of Holbrook who have been so generous with their time and memories.


Sound Work created during my development period


’51.984°N 1.159°E’

An album of compositions released under my ‘there are no birds here’ moniker, utilising my cartographical composition technique, newly gained field recording skills and sounds suggested by my local community to create a sonified social history of place that explores presence and absence in a rural soundscape. This is a living album to which I will continually add new sounds and compositions. The album can also be experienced as a geolocated soundwalk by downloading the Echoes app and visiting this link https://explore.echoes.xyz/collections/RKws9vO7sDJsgJxv.



‘Annind’

I was invited to provide a composition for an album raising funds for the Amazon Rainforest. The submitted work ‘annind’ under my ‘there are no birds here’ moniker uses Max to sonify the historical data of 'Brazilian Amazon Rainforest Degradation 1999-2019', layered and manipulated field recordings and prepared guitar.



Sounds from my Window

Using my new field recording skills I submitted a recording to a collaborative album of global field recordings made from windows.


‘Listening to the Landscape: Holbrook’ Podcast

A podcast to share my field recordings. Available on Apple Podcasts and as a Soundcloud playlist below.





Site specific live performances during the development period.


Minories Gallery, Colchester March 2024

I performed at the Minories Gallery, Colchester, in March 2024 as ‘there are no birds here’. The performance utilised my cartographical composition technique, recordings of the local environment, a distressed tape manipulation of Vaughan Williams' 'Pastoral Symphony Number 3' and prepared guitar.


Sluice: Colchester

I was invited to perform at Sluice: Colchester in June 2024.

“The 2024 Sluice expo revolves around the concept of the vernacular as a means to investigate how culture can manifest in response to differing stimuli, be it structural or ethical.” I performed my work as part of the ‘Modern Tendring Vernacular’ event as ‘there are no birds here’ using my cartographical composition technique, manipulated field recording and prepared guitar to explore East Anglian rural working class soundscapes.


Cuckoo Farm, June 2024

I was invited to create a site specific piece at an artist studio space and gallery in Colchester under my ‘there are no birds here’ moniker. The performance included use of the cartographical composition technique, a live-stream of the sounds of the natural environment broadcast into the performance space that were manipulated in real time and prepared guitar.



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© 2025 Matthew Shenton

(Suffolk sound artist 'there are no birds here')

Homepage photo credit: Dell Atreides

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