Labels

Below Sea Level - A ride out to Fen Drayton Lakes and it's perfect soundtrack

Simon Scott's CD "Below Sea Level"
At the beginning of the week I took a ride on the Dursely Perdersen out to Fen Drayton Lakes along the Cambridgeshire Guided Busway. The whole area surrounding the lakes has been flooded for weeks and I wanted to see how things were. The water level  has fallen a lot but, as the photos below show, there is still plenty of water about. The church you can see in silhouette on the horizon of the second photo is St Andrew's at Swavesey.

When I got back home I made a pot of tea and took a first look at the shots I'd taken all whilst listening to Simon Scott's wonderful and most recent CD "Below Sea Level". Simon spent two years going into the fens with hydrophones and self-built recording devices to, as the record label puts it, "explore the land that is cartographically below mean sea level, [to] trace the devastating history of this environment caused by the drainage of the land, and arrange it into conceptual musical and visual project." Simon performed some live versions of these pieces in the Memorial (Unitarian) Church last year. A great experience - especially for a lover of both the Fens and Ambient Music - like me. That it happened in the church where I am the minister was an added delight.

Anyway, as you look at these photos taken at Fen Drayton you might want to listen to a couple of tracks from the CD that Simon has kindly made available on his Soundcloud page:







Email Post
Labels:
My name is Andrew James Brown. I’m a philosophically/theologically inclined writer with deep sympathies towards Imaoka Shin’ichirō's understanding of a creative, inquiring, free and liberative religion/spirituality (jiyū shūkyō 自由宗教), Jōdo Shinshū Buddhism, Konkokyo, Christian non-theism, D. G. Leahy’s “thinking now occurring for the first time”, a Lucretian inspired religious naturalism, new materialism and Kyoto School philosophy; also a photographer, cyclist, walker and jazz bass player. In addition to this, I’m the minister of a small, liberal, free religious community in Cambridge (UK)

Comments

Algernon said…
Marvellous photographs! My camera skills are very rudimentary but I would still be interested in what you used.
21 April 2013 at 09:44
Andrew James Brown said…
Dear Algernon,

I'm glad you enjoyed the photos. Thanks for writing to say so. My camera skills are also very rudimentary. My camera is a Pentax Optio RZ18 (a good quality point and shoot camera that fits easily into my cycling jacket pocket) and the editing program I use is called Camera Bag.

It's all very straightforward and lowbrow stuff but it works and I gain a great deal of pleasure from the results.

Warmest wishes,

Andrew
21 April 2013 at 17:32
Post a Comment