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Soundwalk Collective
Death Must Die - Recordings From Varanasi 2004 - 2009

Album US 2011 on Oversampling Inc. label
Spoken Word (Field Recording)

Composition: Stephan Crasneanscki. Field recording: Tatiana Irvine, Dug Winningham, Stephan Crasneanscki. Sound design: Dug Winningham. Produced by Soundwalk Limited 108 copies. From soundwalkcollective.com: Death Must Die is a sound piece that begins before the rising of the sun and reproduces the cycle of a day in Varanasi… Benares, Kashi; a sacred city, where death is everywhere, bathed in light. It is here that Hindus come to die and burn their dead. It is here, on the river’s edges, that the wrath and the grace of Shiva are expressed. The sound intoxicating as death itself, it is a hammering song of the dead, playing until one is transfixed. It's the murmuring of the Ganges… the power of silence. The live performance revisits the cycles between life and death, using sound as a metaphor: the laughter of children playing, dogs barking - it contrasts the extreme accumulation of bells, the infernal trance of religious songs, the peculiar sound of bodies burning upon wood… the voice of an young nun coming from an ashram in the silence of the night.

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