Introduction

99 Flakes!

I am a self-professed Anglophile. England has fascinated me for so long, I can’t remember a time when I didn’t want to live there. But it was England’s music – its sounds – that cemented my connection with the country. As a musician, how a place sounds is just as important to me as its customs and appearance. So it seemed only natural when sound shaped both of my journeys to England. This May’s trip even began with a song: as I caught my first glimpse of England from our plane, I listened to Peter Gabriel’s “Solsbury Hill.”

            It was originally my dad’s idea to record sounds during our trip. From London to Paris to Liverpool, we captured sounds of ordinary life. We came home with over twenty recordings, seemingly of random moments: gentle reminders to “mind the gap” on London’s Underground; the crowd singing a Beatles song in Liverpool’s Cavern Club; the creak of a churchyard gate in Dartmoor National Park. But, listening to those recordings, I realized that they were reminders of how England felt, not just of how it looked. The sounds we captured preserved details that I would have forgotten without the recordings.

            My love for England is intimately connected with music and sound. So the sounds of its everyday life, with a cameo or two from Paris, are the focus of this blog. It is a musician’s celebration of the beautiful land I hope to someday call home.

One of my favorite skylines...