Matthew Sheret.com

“I am sitting in a room different from the one you are in now. I am recording the sound of my speaking voice and I am going to play it back into the room again and again until the resonant frequencies of the room reinforce themselves so that any semblance of my speech, with perhaps the exception of rhythm, is destroyed. What you will hear, then, are the natural resonant frequencies of the room articulated by speech. I regard this activity not so much as a demonstration of a physical fact, but more as a way to smooth out any irregularities my speech might have.”

This is the closest I’ll ever come to recording a cover version. Since reading Paul Morley’s excellent Words and Music I’ve wanted to record a version of Alvin Lucier’s ‘I am sitting in a room’, and realised I had the time, space and facilities to do so in Montreal.

What followed was a recording attempt of absolutely terrible quality, that lacks any of the subtlety, dislocation and haunting power of Lucier’s original recording. Click the text above for the mp3, which gets unbearable after about six generations of the text before continuing to degrade a further four. I cannot promise that I won’t try and do this again in the future.