no.240 |Considering Transitions with Saumon Oboudiyat
PSO is very excited to present a collaboration with sound-based practitioner, music producer, and architectural designer Saumon Oboudiyat. We met during a song-share session during Brian Eno’s class hosted by School of Song. Saumon makes carefully crafted, immersive cinematic compositions that span electromagnetic and field recording, synths, and sound processing. He constructs intricate worlds, drawing inspiration from his near-decade of experience in architecture and a lifetime of working with music.
For PSO no. 240, I sent Saumon a field recording of my front porch dawn chorus. Saumon used this recording as a map to layer a dynamic soundscape that rewards careful and repeated listening.
For the piece, Saumon drew upon Eno and Peter Schmidt’s Oblique Strategies. We took the title from a card he drew, which read, “Are there sections? Consider transitions."
Saumon shared his process, writing: "I approached the work by first listening and learning from the inherent inflection points in the recording, asking "what does the recording have to say?". Letting the field recording 'drive' the compositional decisions always brings a spirit of creative submission and constraint. The interventions I made include splicing in field recordings from my personal library, augmenting certain frequencies in the base field recording, and lacing in some improvised synth performances. And, of course, moments of silence - to foreground the inherent beauty of the original recording."
The image combines a photograph of prismatic light cast on the wall of Saumon’s office, which nostalgically recalls an apartment he and his wife shared as newlyweds, with a picture of the fair pecan tree that graces our view from the porch in Austin.
Saumon will release his debut solo album as sohme this summer via the Spirituals Imprint from Phantom Limb UK. Saumon is the founder of sohme production, the hub of his sound-based practice, which encompasses music production, film & podcast scoring, field recording, and sound installations. He is also half of the songwriting duo MVSO. Check out more of his work on his website.
Saumon shared his process, writing: "I approached the work by first listening and learning from the inherent inflection points in the recording, asking "what does the recording have to say?". Letting the field recording 'drive' the compositional decisions always brings a spirit of creative submission and constraint. The interventions I made include splicing in field recordings from my personal library, augmenting certain frequencies in the base field recording, and lacing in some improvised synth performances. And, of course, moments of silence - to foreground the inherent beauty of the original recording."
The image combines a photograph of prismatic light cast on the wall of Saumon’s office, which nostalgically recalls an apartment he and his wife shared as newlyweds, with a picture of the fair pecan tree that graces our view from the porch in Austin.
Saumon will release his debut solo album as sohme this summer via the Spirituals Imprint from Phantom Limb UK. Saumon is the founder of sohme production, the hub of his sound-based practice, which encompasses music production, film & podcast scoring, field recording, and sound installations. He is also half of the songwriting duo MVSO. Check out more of his work on his website.
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