My brother and I lost our mother earlier than we should have. He had just turned 14; I was 20. She was 44. All these years later, I still find myself craving the sound of her voice.
She came to Toronto from Troon, Scotland as a child, but she never lost her accent. One of my fondest memories was listening to her brogue sharpen when she spent an evening with a fellow celt.
She and I would talk endlessly, about everything. I became a kind of confidant to her as she navigated the 1970s and the inevitable disappointments that came with being a stay-at-home mom.
I doubt I had much to offer in the way of support, but she always made me feel heard. She never spoke down to me, and when it came time for me to be a parent I worked hard to follow that lead.
More than anything, my mother taught me how to listen. All these years later, I miss the sound of her voice. I’d gladly trade a photo or two for an audio recording of a chat we shared.
In a similar vein, I miss the sounds of my childhood home. How wonderful would it be to have a cassette recording of a family dinner or a drive to visit the grandparents?
This is what makes found sound such a compelling tool in audio art — its ability to document an experience and share it with a broader audience. Sometimes that’s an exercise in recontextualization. Sometimes it’s simply a record of the past.
Three extraordinary examples come to mind.
One of my favourites landed in 2017 — Nate Scheible’s Fairfax. Visiting a north Virginia thrift shop, he found a cassette tape of an audio love letter recorded by an unnamed woman. Scheible layered excerpts from her recordings over nine ambient tracks.
Another is Gomel, 1986, a six-track collection of pieces from a sound installation of the same name. It documented the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant disaster, triggered by a failed safety test of the No. 4 reactor.
The third is this collage of sounds from a protest during U.S. President Donald Trump’s first term in office.
It was Helsinki-based sound artist and ambient composer miska lamberg’s debut that got me thinking about all of this. Her new album incorporates sounds from her daily life into her work, lending a real sense of intimacy to these six compositions. Evening, window is a quiet stunner.
More new music
Produced for a stage adaptation of Solaris, based on Stanislaw Lem’s book and later made famous by the great filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky. Every bit a success.
Clare Cooper on guzheng and Jean-Philippe Gross on electronics. The Berlin duo’s first, after forming in 2007. More than worth the wait.
Swedish electroacoustic composer Erik Klinga has released the second of his trilogy for the Thanatosis label. Also check out Elusive Shimmer.
The Moderns 
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