***THIS “ALBUM” IS NOT USED FOR PASSIVE LISTENING. PLEASE READ THE INTRODUCTION BELOW BEFORE USING IT ***

July 18 is celebrated globally as World Listening Day. The date was chosen as it’s the birthday of R. Murray Schafer, the founder of acoustic ecology. Activities during World Listening Day, as proposed by the World Listening Project, include an item called “Setting aside some time paying attention to your soundscape”. This EP, released as a celebration of the World Listening Day, is a TOOL for us to pay attention and listen to “our own soundscape”.

Tracks in the 《World Listening Day》album are not tracks for passive listening, but tracks to help us listen to our soundscape: You are the one who create your own soundscape. To do so, get a place with minimal disturbance, play the tracks using speaker (no headphone) in very low volume, then follow the breathing instruction below, and listen to how your breath: Pay attention to your breathing sound, especially it’s texture and it’s droning nature, spot the difference between breathing in and breathing out, and also the difference between each breath. Listen to how your breaths lag behind the signals played in the tracks, and how phasing-liking effects are formed between your breaths and the track sound. Also pay attention to the random subtle sound from the external environment, as well as subtle sound generated from your body, and see how they interact with you breathes.

The breathing patterns are as follows:

Track A (7-11): 7-11 breathing technique is adopted. Breathe in when you hear the high pitch note, breathe out when you hear the low pitch note. Repeat and spot the difference in each breath cycle.

Track B (4-7-8): 4-7-8 breathing technique is adopted. Breathe in when you hear the middle pitch note, hold your breath when you hear the low pitch note, then breathe out when you hear the high pitch note. When you hold your breath, pay attention to the very subtle sound around you, and pay attention how your breathe out sound interacts with this environmental sound after the high pitch note.

Create your own “field record”, explore the possibility of listening in the World Listening Day!

nationaltoday.com/world-listening-day/

(The price of the album is set to be zero/name your price so as to celebrate World Listening Day)


*** This album is our second attempt of the “BCA…’ (Band Camp As….) initiative. In the BCA… initiative, we try to explore the possibilities of Bandcamp player, other than being a passive music player in traditional way. In 《23:58:20》, Bampcamp was adopted as a platform of performing art, while in 《World Listening Day》, tracks in this Bandcamp album become a tool for the above mentioned listening exercise. The role of Bandcamp becomes a resource/tool platform instead of content/music platform. More experiments exploring / redefining the nature of a music platform will be conducted in future.

《23:58:20》
433records.bandcamp.com/album/23-58-20