The City of London was a strange place to visit during lockdown. With offices, shops and bars all shut, an eerie quiet replaced the usual intense mix of traffic, building works, amplified music and – my favourite sound – bell ringing. I made these recordings at the City of London’s Festival of Bells 2021 because […]
I spent the weekend thinking about the value in the unwanted. Yesterday I went on a foraging course at Horsenden Hill where my eyes were opened (and my palette introduced) to the delights of edible ‘weeds’; weeds being plants in the wrong place. Today I took a fabulous group round Mudchute, Millwall and Greenwich on A Rubbish […]
Tickertape Productions · Trafalgar Square skateboarders, rush hour 16 April 2021 London has been – and sounded – so very different under lockdown. I made this recording on a Friday afternoon reccie just as the restrictions were beginning to ease. It’s of Trafalgar Square – a tourist hotspot on a major traffic route through the […]
I was thrilled that a recording I made last September of St Paul’s Cathedral’s bells was shortlisted for Sound of the Year 2020! It’s a newly launched ‘celebration of everyday sound (not music) in all its forms’, presented by the Museum of Sound in partnership with The New BBC Radiophonic Workshop. I spotted the awards […]
Last September I made a recording of six of St Paul’s Cathedral bells quietly chiming for the 11.30am Eucharist service. It’s a startlingly different sound to the usually exuberant Sunday ringing of twelve bells; and a direct sonic consequence of the coronavirus restrictions. I thought it would be interesting to enter the recording for the […]
What a year so far! Lockdown, of course, put a stop to our walks. It also completely changed Central London. Things that we would usually marvel at – the noise and pace of the West End, the bizarre theatre of hearings in the Royal Courts of Justice, bells ringing out across the City – ceased. And core […]
Bern Cathedral bell ringing on a Saturday Listen on radio aporee Recording by Felix Blume, 24.02.19 Dotmaker Tours has now gone global! Well, perhaps not global, but I did just have a thrilling long weekend in Switzerland with postgrad students at the University of Bern. I was there to lead a soundwalk and give a classroom presentation […]
It was a real treat to launch our new tour Trinity Buoy Wharf and Secrets of the Docks with this lovely group of families last Saturday. It’s a walk that explores the twists and turns of the Thames round North Greenwich peninsula, and the ebbs and flows of water, people and industry. The group photo was […]
I had a fascinating afternoon yesterday taking a group of Russian journalists on A Rubbish Trip. It was part of a course run by Thomson Reuters Foundation on waste and recycling. And finally a chance to share one of my favourite London rubbish stories. It concerns this Dust Heap at Battle Bridge (now the area […]
Our last walk of the year, The London Ear, will take place on Remembrance Sunday. It’s a poignant time to think about peace, silence and noise. London experienced a noisy kind of peace on Armistice Day 1918. The social reformer Beatrice Webb wrote in her diary: ‘Peace! London today is a pandemonium of noise and revelry, […]
