Excerpt from from the original liner notes:
Music for Street Rumor is an extended composition of 20 episodes rising out of a specific field recording. Sometimes, the document itself becomes the platform on which music just happens. Other times, it sets the key and tempo in which musical improvisations take place. On certain occasions, found sound is converted to musical notes and then “scored” for different instruments and arrangements.
Indicative of this are the opening and closing segments where the chant of a street vendor in Beijing is scored for electric guitar and piano, or “Berlin Bells” in which the sound of the famous Kaiser Wilhelm Church bells was recorded very close, almost up against the wall of the building across the street, where the bouncing reverberations coalesce into a river of sound, and then scored for an ensemble of instruments, including drums.
Along with these explicitly focused transformations of found sound, the journey takes us through a range of echoes: from the sound of crickets, dogs, birds, or babies to magpies making mayhem at dusk; radio grooving in Malawi; an iron forger in Lahore; urban riots in Athens or the Gay Pride parade in Munich; New York taxi rides and public bathroom confessions; weird telephone messages; improvised noisemaking and industrial lovemaking; or shouts wafting from children’s playgrounds, performance spaces, living rooms, bars, streets, and restaurants in various parts of the world.
Each of these episodes is like the soundtrack of a dream. Imagine opening and closing little books like windows onto chaos.
Credits
Originally released May 17, 2019. Reimagined, remixed, and remastered June -September 2024
Music for Street Rumor was composed, arranged, and recorded by Count G at The Boys Room in New York, between November 2018 and April 2019, except the first part of “Olga’s Playground” which was recorded in Athens on October 10, 2018.
This release features two new compositions, “Birdworld Underground” and “Hogs 2” which are outtakes from the original sessions.
Besides field recordings, all other sounds were created, manipulated, and performed by Count G, except the voices in “Fury and Testament” which are a cut-up remix of György Ligeti’s “Aventures”.
The piano parts are extracts from “The Mansfield Improvisations” which were recorded in West Hollywood (March 28-29, 2018).
Mastered and remastered at Terra Infirma.
Cover photo: “Refuse” by Stathis Gourgouris (Leros, June 2018). Cover design: Casper Sudswith.
