A few sounds from my travels – I’ll leave posting the industrial sounds until I have that library ready to release next year, but these are some random sounds I captured during my time in Japan.

1. Jack Hammers at Umeda
This sound I heard in the distance & as it was intermittent I wasn’t sure what was creating it… It sounded heavy & powerful & was echoing around the streets in a way that made me think of Godzilla snoring or something… As I got closer it became apparent, workmen were replacing concrete steps & were using jack hammers to break apart the old steps…

2. Kids in the park
Across the street from my girlfriends apartment is a park which the local kids play in – I recorded a few ambiences, but one day whatever game the kids were playing involved lots of screaming. At first I wondered what the hell was going on, but when I played back the recordings at half speed it made me think of some alien jungle…

3. Distant Sirens
Another day I was recording some ambiences from home and suddenly lots of sirens started going off. When walking to the local train station via a different route than usual I discovered there was a fire station a dozen blocks away, but what intrigued me about these fire engine sirens was the extra tone: after each rise & fall of the siren there was an answering tone, that was almost musical in nature…

4. Electioneering
With upcoming elections in Japan it was quite common to hear cars drive by, with loud hailers blaring out electioneering… One day I came out of Yodobashi in Umeda & along the block was a big political rally from which the speech was echoing around amongst the buildings… And not being able to understand what was being said made it seem slightly sinister, when I am sure it wasn’t!

5. Train passes
I love the sounds of trains in Japan – there are so many different kinds of trains, and of course depending on tracks the same train can also emit very different sounds (eg there is a section on the MidoSuji subway track that gets really loud in the mid frequencies at a certain point between two stations) One day on the way home I stopped by a train crossing and recorded a few local train passes, waiting for the occaisional express train between Umeda, Osaka and Kobe. The first one that went by overloaded my levels so I had to stay & wait for the next one quarter of an hour later…

All recordings made with a Sony PCM D100