Listening to the Landscape: Holbrook

This sound walk is an exploration of how the soundscape of the Suffolk village of Holbrook has changed over the last century.

I have been working with members of the current community to explore their favourite village sounds, to question why some sounds disappear and to think about about what the village might sound like in the future.

Using archive material and the biography of local man Warrenton Page, I have discovered that the working sounds of the village have all but disappeared. These unique sounds including the blacksmith, couriers, cobblers and field workers have been replaced with the drones of mechanised machinery and the internal combustion engine.

Using OS Explorer map 197, the village has been split into 8 sections that correspond to the OS grid squares, and a composition written for each section that mixes village sounds past and present. Lost sounds have been recreated by me, and current sounds have been captured in field recordings gathered during 2024.

Sounds have been manipulated, sliced, looped and blended to make a sonic portrait of the village over time. The putta-putta noise of the gas engine at the mill now floats in and around the sound of chainsaws and Apache helicopters. The rooks of Clench road scream to be heard above the drones of combine harvesters and irrigation systems. The creaking leather of the cobbler loops around a self service machine at the supermarket. The ultrasonic rumbles of an oil boiler drift under the clicks of a semi-frozen heat-source pump.

Each geolocated area uses a a graphic score for its arrangement; contour lines, footpath routes, locations of water and of woodland inform each piece.

By clicking through to the individual tracks, listeners can discover which historical and modern sounds are represented.

The soundwalk is a work in progress.

Five compositions representing five OS grid squares are available now, and three more will appear over time until the whole village has been mapped sonically.