Music that hits you so strong that you stop what you were doing, transporting you to an otherworld. In this essay, our writer ponders this alternative space she finds when listening to specific tracks.
Sonic Worlding is a regular Norient column. It invites writers and artists from all over the world to contemplate a music or sound-related phenomenon that has recently struck them, and put this into relation to the world in which they live. It encourages to think and speculate with and not only about music. Where most music writing treats music as something that can be categorised and placed in pre-determined boxes (personality cults, end-of-year lists, genres, origins, styles), Sonic Worlding is interested in the vast potential of rhythms, ideas, and worlds that are still to be unlocked, attempting to spin new webs of thought spanning the globe. Edited and curated by Norient editor Philipp Rhensius.
Essay by Piotr Tkacz-BielewiczWhat is real in recorded reality? While listening to the music of Lucie Páchová and Paweł Kułczyński, our author speculates on their use of field recordings of seemingly natural sound sources. Read a new essay from the Sonic Worlding column.
Sound Piece by Shanti Suki OsmanIn her sound piece, artist and educator Shanti Suki Osman explores the sonority of rage. Listen to a new episode of the Sonic Worlding column, which asks how one’s positionality is created by the people who listen.
Essay by Marie ThompsonOne day, when pregnant, our author listened to a song and began to cry unintentionally. In what ways, she asks herself in a new episode of the Sonic Worlding column, are the romanticization of music and pregnancy connected?
Short Essay by A. Goveas«Ohrwurm» or «Earworm» – usually used to describe a song torturously stuck in your head. But what about those of us who yearn for this? All I do is listen to one song over and over again, for weeks on end. Is this a happily welcomed, disassociated kind of relief from reality?
Essay by Philipp RhensiusA body walks through the city while listening to a DJ mix. The switching between sites is like switching between tracks is like switching between worlds. An essay poem inspired by a mix of the New York-based artist Zarina.
Short Essay by Alex RigottiAlex Rigotti explores the city of Bern, Switzerland, using only their hearing – and in doing so, uncovers new worlds of understanding perception and the environment.
Poetic Text by Peggy Kyoungwon LeeWhat happens when a record player is played with acrylic nails instead of a needle? Read an essay by the scholar and writer Peggy Kyoungwon Lee in which she evokes a world that refuses to be reproduced.
Short Essay by Renata YazzieFor Indigenous people, listening to music can function as an act of kinship, where identities are strengthened and acknowledged through building relationships with their environment. Read an essay by Indigenous musicologist and pianist, Renata Yazzie, inspired by the music of powwow singer Joe Rainey.
Sound Piece by Maria Frederika Malmström, Desert KitesBy thinking about and with sound, we experience the world through embodied practices. In her mesmerizing sonic essay based on field recordings in a protest-struck Cairo, our contributor asks: How are bodies, things, and cityscapes interconnected?
Column by Eleni IkoniadouA lament is a clandestine form of remembering. In this sonic fiction, our writer imagines a chorus of marginalized voices arriving from the future and enacting a critical fabulation of the past and present.
Column by Łukasz PolowczykMaking field recordings is like tapping into an alien world. For our writer, it feels less like experiencing, more like becoming time itself.
Column by Majd ShidiacIn this sonic fiction, our writer depicts the Moroccan avant garde band Nass El Ghiwane as straying birds in search of a different life.
Column by Gisela SwaragitaThe Indonesian summer is very hot. It’s when our writer shelters at home listening to music, only to realize that the state between slumber and consciousness can not be as innocent as it used to be.
Column by Martyn PepperellListening to live music outside can be a life changing experience. For our author, it set nothing less than the pathway of his life.
Column by Agata PyzikIn the first essay of the new monthly Norient column «Sonic Worlding», our writer delves deep into the history of Ukraine’s vast underground music scene.
