Caught by the River

Kate Carr's Sounds of Iceland and Australia

Kate Carr | 4th March 2017

Excerpt from gig for Caught By The River at the Horse Hospital February 27, 2017 from Kate Carr on Vimeo.

Following Kate’s mesmerising performance at our Horse Hospital event earlier this week, she’s sent us a little edit of her set. This three-minute excerpt features underwater recordings, ski wire recordings, and spoken word of the traditional Icelandic song Kvöld Sigling (Night sailing).

Kate was also featured in Dazed & Confused this week, having created a piece representing the sounds of Australia for Dazed’s alternative national anthem feature. She says:

‘It is hard to include all my many thoughts about the state of Australia in one short piece of sound, but this piece aims to convey a few of them. In part, it is a reflection on the country’s singular soundscape, which in inner-city Sydney – where I lived for many years – was full of the chatter of flying foxes, the screech of cockatoos and the cries of currawongs. It is only living now in the UK that I’ve come to realise both how unique, and how loud Australia’s urban wildlife is. There is indeed no place that sounds quite like home. But this piece is also a comment on Australia’s political situation, and the complacency the country’s extreme privilege and isolation engenders. For all of my adult life Australian governments of both the left and the right have together treated refugees in the most appalling and illegal manner, refused to endorse gay marriage, and failed to honour our obligations as one of the world’s major producers of greenhouse gases to combat climate change. In leaving Australia, I’ve come to see the country much more starkly in terms of its singularity, its incredible wealth and privilege, and its staggering complacency and arrogance.’ Read/listen here.

Kate’s album I Had Myself a Nuclear Spring, released on Rivertones last year, is available here in our shop.

Kate Carr on Caught by the River/on Twitter