Instituto de Psicogeografía
Psicogeografía I (April 2024)
90 min collage combining electronic noise and drone textures with field recordings, radio broadcasts, sounds of household objects, insects, glitches, interferences, etc.
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Notes
To create this recording, Instituto de Psicogeografía collected a variety of ambient sounds, including water and rain, the hum of the metro, the chirping of crickets, the buzz of a circular saw in an auto repair shop, the echo of a semi-abandoned park, and the radio chatter of air traffic controllers and taxi drivers.
Different voices were captured from Mexican radio and TV broadcasts. Among these, you can hear a weather forecast, an advertisement for a prayer hotline, and prayers to Jesus Christ. These were some of the programs encountered in a semi-dream state at 3 AM, where hidden messages seemed to emerge from the songs and words of the announcers.
Many sounds, such as night crickets, rain, the hissing and breathing of a coffee maker, and an Aztec death whistle, were recorded in a small house. The recording is infused with the house's acoustics and the memories associated with it.
The idea then emerged to combine all these elements into one long piece, resembling a radio broadcast, and call it 'Psychogeography.' This is its first part.
Over these 90 minutes, sound diaries are interwoven with the noise and bubbling of modular synthesizers, digital glitches, and interferences. Various knob-tweaking sessions are blended together. The division into different parts (tracklist) is arbitrary, as is their meaning. Consider it an unconscious, schizophrenic stream of sounds and sonic textures.
Track listing
Side A
- Weather report
- First metro train
- Crickets outside of my house
- Multilínea oración
- Radio voice soup
- Lado de Dios y del mundo
- Sound check across the park
- Strings HDGT
- Radio pulse
- Light rain
- Night taxi
- Coffee
- ATCFDBCK1
- Mmessage
- Fountain
- Street 9pm
- TV Prayer
- Cathedral square
- Last message A
Side B
- Intro B
- Death calls
- Synth 12-20
- ATCFDBCK2
- Synth 12-20 cont.
- Bus station
- Droning texture
- Singing bowl
- Windy night by the road
- ATCFDBCK3 and power lines
- Reality boiling
- ATCFDBCK4
- Power lines by the road
- G.R.HTON
- S.JHS
- Bus station birds
- Last message B
- Subterránea
- Buzz
Sound sources
- AM radio
- Air traffic control
- Arcade machine
- Aztec death whistle
- Band doing a soundcheck
- Bass
- Bedroom acoustics
- Birds
- Broken glass
- Buses
- Cars
- Cat playing with toys
- Cat pulling guitar strings
- Cathedral bells
- Christian cable TV
- Circular saw
- Coffee machine
- Crickets
- Delay
- Digital TV glitch noise
- Feedback loops
- Fireworks
- Fountains
- Guitar (acoustic)
- Metro trains
- Microphone jack touching the skin
- Modular synth
- Neighborhood dogs
- Phone answering machine
- Power lines
- Rain
- Reverb
- RF interference
- Road tunnel
- Roads
- Rusty gas water heater
- Singing bowls
- Speaker feedback noise
- Taxi radio
- Water running in pipes
- Water pump at a dam
- Weather report (Nat. Weather Service)
- Wind
- Wrinkled and torn paper
- Wrist watch alarm
Location and time (approx.)
- 20°37'26"N 103°17'08"W 5AM
- 20°40'34"N 103°20'49"W 6AM
- 20°58'57"N 101°17'14"W 3AM, 7AM
- 21°00'49"N 101°15'03"W 3AM
- 21°01'04"N 101°15'39"W 5PM
- 21°01'11"N 101°15'44"W 9PM
- 21°01'23"N 101°15'40"W 3AM
- 21°01'26"N 101°15'38"W 11PM
- 21°01'42"N 101°15'43"W 4AM
- 21°01'58"N 101°16'02"W 4PM
- 21°03'50"N 101°10'17"W 6PM
- 21°04'20"N 101°11'45"W 11AM
Credits
Performed, recorded, and mixed by Instituto de Psicogeografía.
October 2023–March 2024.
Special thanks for extra samples:
- José Villanueva: “Strings HDGT”.
- Daniela Méndez Lugo: “S.JHS”.
- Stephen F. Catus: “Strings HDGT”, “Mmessage”.
This work is licensed under CC BY 4.0.