Listening Journal - January 2025 - Mumbai

Tinkers surrounded by piles of different coloured soles, pots of polish and assorted tools, sit at the end of each platform tapping small wooden sticks to gain attention from passing passengers. The combined tapping is spatially pleasing, woodblock polyrhythms moving back and forth along the ends of the platforms. A huge air horn blast adds a dramatic counter and now crow caws join the wooden pecking of the tinkerers.

Photo by Jim Stephenson

I was incredibly lucky to visit Mumbai in January to attend the ADFF. STIRR film festival. ‘The Architect Has Left the Building’, the multi screen, multi speaker installation I made with Jim Stephenson and Sofia Smith for RIBA, was being exhibited at the festival and Jim and I ran a workshop and took part in a panel.

I dedicate this month’s listening journal to the sounds I heard during this trip, my first to India. As usual it’s a mix of sound descriptions, metaphors and thoughts on listening. The practice of listening and writing about it is more important than the sharing. It’s worth saying that I didn’t set out to make a comprehensive sound portrait of Mumbai (this would be an immense and amazing project) and instead these are just the sounds that were unique to my time in this sonically rich city.

Thanks to all the teams at STIR, ADFF, RIBA, NCPA and The British Council for making this project and trip possible, and of course Jim for being a great travel companion.

Read it here.

Shanghai 1933 Soundwalk

One of the buildings that I created music for as part of the Musicity project, was the Shanghai Slaughterhouse, 1933. This pre brutalist brutal building was designed to expedite the killing of animals to provide meat for Shanghai’s residents. It is now a space for shops, galleries, restaurants and a theatre, but the history is hard to shift, as the design is so striking it makes it impossible to forget its intended purpose.

I spent a couple of days at 1933, recording sounds to use in my piece of music (which is now finished and will be shared soon) but I’d forgotten I also recorded a sort of guided walk during one of Shanghai’s famous downpours. It was interesting to listen back to myself (and also weird) trying to navigate the maze of passages and bridges whilst taking in everything in the space. I’m sharing this as a personal audio journal/sound walk. It isn’t a definitive audio guide.