Today, in honor of World Listening Day, we rebroadcast our story on renowned Australian sound composer, media artist and curator Lawrence English.

This episode of gets deep into English’s own listening practices as an artist, specifically a technique he calls Relational Listening. In fact, as you’ll hear, he describes himself not as a sound maker but as a professional listener—that’s how central the act of listening is to his artistic practice.

In particular he talks about his reworking of an important work in the fields of musique concrète and field recording, Presque Rien by Luc Ferrari, and the recent premiere of Wave Fields, his own 12-hour durational sound installation for sleepers at Burleigh Heads in Queensland as part of the Bleach* Festival.

Lawrence is interested in the nature of listening and the capability of sound to occupy a body. Working across an eclectic array of aesthetic investigations, English’s work prompts questions of field, perception and memory. He investigates the politics of relation listening and perception, through live performance, field recordings and installation.

The show includes extracts from the following tracks:

Album: Cruel Optimism: “Hammering a Screw.”

Album: Wilderness of Mirrors: “Wilderness of Mirrors,” “Wrapped in Skin.”

Album: Songs of the Living: “Trigona Carbonaria Hive Invasion, Brisbane Australia,” “Cormorants Flocking At Dusk Amazon Brazil,” “Various Chiroptera Samford Australia.”

Album: Ghost Towns: “Ghost Towns.”

Album: Kiri No Oto: “Soft Fuse.”

Luc Ferrari: Presque Rien. 

Transcript

[♪ ethereal music playing ♪]

[CRIS CHEEK]

This… is… Phantom Power.

[COMPUTERIZED VOICE]

Episode 4.

[CRIS]

On Listening In.

[buzzing sounds fade in, and fade out as Cris begins to speak]

[CRIS]

The hive of the sugarbag bee, endemic to northeastern Australia.

[loud music starts abruptly]

The first notes of a piece called…

[more loud notes]

Hammering the Screw.

[scratching noises and metallic noises begin]

Found objects – a 44 gallon drum, a ghost town in far northern Australia.

[scratching sounds]

Just some small extracts from recordings made by today’s guest.

[MACK HAGOOD]

It’s Phantom Power, sounds about sound. That’s Cris Cheek, and I’m Mack Hagood.

[LAWRENCE ENGLISH, pre-recorded]

I’m Lawrence English, and I have been described as a professional listener.

[bullfrog sounds fade in]

Which does make me sound like a very second-rate therapist.

[laughing]

But, it is the kind of thing that I spend a lot of time doing in my everydays. There is a lot of listening that goes on, and I suppose in some respects you know, I’m increasingly interested in problematizing what that actually means,

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