Standford
About
A Rural Idyll
In the Forest Garden
Inner Landscapes
Absent Presence
Trace
On paper
In sound
@hortus_silvam
Headphones or conventional speakers recommended for more detailed listening.
1. Wandering 05.11
2. Bittersweet 03.16
3. Shared shadow 07.19
4. Dagian 09.49
5. Absence 06.05
6. Inside out 02.50
Ephemeral Things is an experimental collection of six compositions. Melody has been found within layers of recording and editing where my own vocals or instruments are interwoven with gathered field recordings which shift in and out of ‘beating’ dissonance while curious interjections and mumblings of the (in)audible pause time.
This is a landscape of introspection altering the sensation of time, exploring minimal shifts in pitch, inviting intent focus on the way each track unfolds. Intimate, quiet, slow and softly shimmering. The context is removed to immerse the listener in a place-less drift where there is a sense of entering into another world; holding the moment before it slips away.
© Sophie Standford, 2025
Sound and Moving Image Collection, British Library
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1. Sleep Wake 02.52
2. Are you sitting comfortably? 01.40
3. Frustration 02.21
4. Fragility 06.10
5. Unsettling 02.30
6. Interruptions 09.57
7. Disarray 00.31
8. Defeat 04.50
9. Distraction 06.44
'belonging to tomorrow'
...to procrastinate is to delay
or postpone action;
to put off doing something,
intentionally: the temptation will be
to procrastinate until
the power struggle plays itself out...
Relentless sounds of procrastination;
enduring an abhorrent impotence to act.
© Sophie Standford, 2022
Sound and Moving Image Collection, British Library
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A project of embodied listening, as absent presence, to places of increasing marginalisation, where the uncompromising, non-negotiable ‘rural’ and industrial simultaneously intersect and elide; unearthing the inaudible, unnoticed, unremarkable, or inescapable in a Suffolk landscape.
Each sound is an unedited field recording with no assigned sequence, accumulating as they become unearthed; captured with equipment discrete and light enough to be carried while out walking.
The Caged and the Free emerged after relocating to rural Suffolk and being confronted by personal memories, assumptions and expectations with regard to the concept of ‘rural’. In this project, field recording has become a way of processing witness to this fragile place of eerie disquiet.
Through the practice of walking and performing, acoustics are gathered evidencing the conflicting demands of extraction and extinction associated with perpetual growth and expansion, where genetically engineered technologies are quietly turning fields into labs blurring the boundaries between the natural and the synthetic.
In rection to the wider Suffolk landscape, field recordings are gathered through the practice of quiet activism forming a score for a Forest Garden in collaboration with the non-human, within the framework of a quarter-acre, nature rich, edible forest garden initiative, created and maintained since 2016.
‘…to listen is to lean in, softly, with a willingness to be changed by what we hear.’ David Abram, ecologist and philosopher.
1. Bees nest 12.25
2. The caged and the free 13.18
3. Barley field sound walk 04.50
4. Bird bath 09.30
5. Pond in Spring 10.09
6. Sound walk to the research station 06.35
7. Fallen orchard apple 11.45
8. Barbed wire field 03.27
9. Pig farming 05.33
10. House flies 09.20
11. Chainlink perimeter 11.20
12. Rat tail lavae 08.13
13. Sugarbeet campaign 03.29
14. Building new poultry units 07.44
15. Black ants 05.55
© Sophie Standford, 2022-2025 ongoing
Sound and Moving Image Collection, British Library
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1. The wind and the rain 13.13
2. Hiding 03.58
3. Wild on Ben Gulabin 16.57
4. Restless 09.44
5. Discarded 07.41
6. Invisible 02.06
A collection of field recordings gathered on residence at Murmuration #3 - Species, Glenshee, Scotland, June 2022.
© Sophie Standford, 2022
Sound and Moving Image Collection, British Library
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