Presented by The Radiophonic Institute and the Museum Of Sound, The Sound Of The Year Awards is an annual competition celebrating sonic life in its many forms from across the globe. We caught up with Simon James, winner of the Composed With Sound award, which recognises “A composition made predominantly using recorded sound rather than musical”
Tell us about what’s happening in your recording…
“‘Neolithic Cannibals’ engaged a group of young people to record sounds in their community, on the Whitehawk council estate in the east of Brighton. Across six workshops there were many inspiring moments of discovery and connection with the Neolithic and contemporary landscape. One stand out moment was the flint knapping – tool making with flint – workshop where we listened to the close up impacts and friction of flint being hammered and cracked.”
What were your immediate reactions afterward?
“Before and throughout the project, I was conscious by how little opportunity young people from areas like Whitehawk get to experiment and play with sound, and to direct their own listening attention. The faces of the young sound artists reacting to these sounds will stay with me long after the project ended. Surprise, delight and huge smiles.”
How does listening to it now make you feel?
“I’m incredibly proud to have worked with such a dedicated group of young artists and that our work has been recognised through the Sound Of The Year Award. All the sounds from the multi-channel soundscape/installation we collaborated on connect to specific moments through the project’s series of workshops and bring up memories of playful, chaotic and magical sessions.”
What’s your background in recording sound?
“I’m a self-trained sound artist from a working class background engaging in deep listening to the unheard/under heard. Over three decades of using field recordings in music and commercial work, including creating sonic landscapes and atmospheres for radio drama, TV and film, that microphone mediated practice has opened a portal to an emerging curious and compassionate listening practice.
“By engaging listening as an act of connection, solidarity, noticing and resistance, my practice offers a model for socially engaged sound art that goes beyond documentation to create spaces for dialogue, play, recognition, weirdness, mess, the power of not knowing and hope.
I bring decades of curiously attuned ears to workshops with a wide range of participants and believe strongly in the power that listening holds to bring about meaningful change. My compositional approach is exploratory and instinctive, focussed on timbral shaping, and finding the sounds in between the sounds.”
What inspires you?
“Increasingly I’m interested in listening and the potential transformative power it can hold.”
The best advice you’ve ever been given or would give?
“The world is more malleable than we are led to believe – Zarina Muhammad, The White Pube.
A caveat – socioeconomic status, gender and ethnicity can mean that it takes a long time and hard work to find that out and barriers feel rock solid and immovable.”
If you could only ever record one more thing, what would it be?
“Some time in the future. A young person from Whitehawk Estate making an opening speech for their Tate Modern, or other major gallery, sound installation.”
To find out more about the Sound Of The Year Awards, go to soundoftheyearawards.com
