“London’s tempo is 122.86 beats per minute,” David Byrne writes in his description of “Get It Away,” a new sound installation that he created over the course of three days in London; the piece was the end result of Byrne’s residency with the ongoing A Room for London project.
“I brought along some field recording gear to use while I was staying in the lovely pod/room/boat,” he explains. “I went out during the day and recorded sounds that I thought might be useful and evocative. It turned out that most of the sounds — even the church organ in Southwark Cathedral — seemed to converge around a common rhythm. It’s a bit too good to be true — that every large city should have its own rhythm, but here it is. I let the sounds dictate the groove, the tempo, and then I simply played along.” Click through now to give it a spin.
David Byrne: Get It Away from Artangel on Vimeo.
[Image credit: Tom Oldham via Pitchfork]