Sonic Experiences - On the Airport

It is Thursday, July 18, 2019 and I’m at Gatwick Airport. There are two different routes for the passengers to get on the plane. Those passengers with seat number greater than 20 need to go down the stairs and pass under the plane to get in. I have ticket number 16D, but for some reason I went down the stairs, although I shouldn’t.

I’m on the airport aisle walking under the wings of the plane and I sense a sonic experience that it is very different to what many people would compare to the Eno-squeue ‘Music for Airports’. A different way of sensing the space with all the sounds muted from the airplanes. Thinking about it again why this listening experience is so intense. It seems like the time is much slower. An esoteric word expression struggles to express something similar to a Terrence Mallick movie. The space is vast and the objects are dominating. Using a good pair of headphones helps so much to isolate the other sounds and focus on what I see.

These rare coincidences happened this morning. What I have been listening is a track called – Session III (Angelige Noaten) from Peter Broderick & Machinefabriek in the ‘Mort Aux Vaches’ album. The track starts with slow piano, possibly from Peter Broderick and a background continuous electronic sound. Quite rare to categorize into an electronic noise or minimalistic sound.

The music instruments while listening to the track change. Broderick plays the violin and Machinefabriek uses a more noisy background sound with voices that are like they are transmitted from radio, which are hard to discern what they are saying.

Voices make their appearance in the track. Broderick possibly records them and they repeatedly being heard in this composition. Piano appears again, and Machinefabriek use a low frequency more pitched electronic sound to accompany the peak of the track.

Listening the track I feel the vast space of the airport overwhelming. The presence of the airplane is huge, but listening again feels like an ambient and live composition coming from everywhere. I don’t know exactly where to look. The huge space of the airport or the airplane. I need to get up to the stairs. I want to stay longer and use all my senses to feel the moment…but I can’t stand still.