This Town is Bringing Me Down

Saturday morning by the waterside in Sale was a strange sonic experience. Whereas everywhere I have listened before has had something distinct which has grabbed my attention, be it the overpowering noise of rush hour outside Central library, or the cacophony of bird song in St Johns Gardens, today's sonic field immediately struck me as nothing more than a dull amalgamation of now familiar sounds.

The airy whoosh of traffic merged blandly with the hum and rumble of the tram, whilst the exhaling shush of a bus engine combined unremarkabley with the shudder and screech of it stopping. There was faint birdsong in the air but it wasn't beautiful as it had been last week, it merely synthesised with the beep of traffic lights and indecipherable high pitched drones that rung in the air.

After previously hearing these sounds close up and en mass, today they seemed tame and distant, uninspiring and insignificant in comparison. But perhaps this is the most interesting thing about them, perhaps this is the thing that helps to explain the relationship between sound and place.

Sale is not an inspiring place, it is neither small and beautiful nor vast and imposing, it is average, ordinary, full of chain stores and soulless pubs, it is like any small town anywhere. The older people who wander around look comfortable and content, but the youth look troubled, bored and claustrophobic. Emotions this soundscape evokes at once. The sound of average.

I felt so unenthused that I was about to leave, but realised that gradually one or two sounds were breaking through and creeping into my more immediate hearing. The dragging, scraping and ricketing of solid plastic pulling over a rough concrete car park, the high pitched translucent chime of rolling glass, the faint sweeping softness of a brush, and the immediate mid range banging of metal.

A still car across the water became apparent to me with the stuttering, ticking air of a low running engine, soft and peaceful, regular and constant. The thin plastic film of a cigarette packet danced around me, fluttering, scraping and fidgeting as it bounced on the concrete, short crackling, crisp sounds ruptured by time in transit.

As the church bells began to strike out across the town, bridging the gap between distance and immediacy, I set off on my bike wondering just how different Sale would feel if it sounded different, and whether the blandness of its overall soundscape perhaps enabled me to hear the more minute sounds that I eventually engaged with.