Thursday 29 October 2015

Soundtracker

Listen to this... and try to hear something without any man made machines around. Soundtracker tries to do just that.

Gordon Hempton is a sound recorder, and has been doing so for a while. What he likes to capture are the sounds of nature, the wind in the fields, the sounds of the birds, that sort of thing. But, more often than not, while he's doing so these days there's a train or an airplane, or something cutting through the soundscape. Eventually, there's a particular sound he wants to capture to encapsulate this, the sound of a bird and a train, together. We follow him as he tries to get this, until the final moment when it all comes together.

There is truth in this documentary, right now as I type this I can hear an airplane in the sky. Just trying to find peace and quiet can be quite an effort. Still... the movie does get heavy handed about hammering home that point at times. And then there's the incidental music. If ever there was a movie in which the natural sound should be playing, this is it.

Interesting, and provoking a few thoughts.

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