Crackle and vinyl noise mark an audio scavenger’s reclamation of lost sound

Evidence

Crackle, then, connotes the return of a certain sense of loss. At the same time, it is also the sign of a found (audio) object, the indication that we are in a scavenger’s space. That is why crackle is a stock-in-trade of someone like turntable artist Philip Jeck. Jeck’s first record had appeared in 1999, but his work gained a new currency because of its convergence with what Burial and The Caretaker were doing. Jeck had been inspired by hearing mixers like Walter Gibbons, Larry Levan and Grandmaster Flash in the 80s, but his montages reconceive DJing as the art of producing sonic phantasmagoria. Using Dansette turntables, FX units and records found in charity shops, Jeck defamiliarises the vinyl source material to the point of near-abstraction. Occasionally, recognizable fragments (60s rock, Mantovani-like lite classical kitsch) thrillingly bob up out of the whooshing delirium-stream. — Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life, 334

Categorization

• DEFINE: Explains why crackle functions as the sonic sign of hauntological found audio and a scavenger’s space.
• XREF: Connects to the author’s broader hauntology project — the sense of loss and lost futures that recurs across the book. — connects to: Vinyl crackle in music marks audiovisual distance from a lost tactile materiality — Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life: Writings on…, 332; Found-sound music evokes orphaned memories belonging to anonymous others — Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life: Writings on…, 336; The tape recorder enables reclaiming lost aural discrimination — Schafer, Murray R, The Soundscape- Our Sonic Environment…, 508

Broader Connections

• Vinyl crackle in music marks audiovisual distance from a lost tactile materiality #expands (0.82) — Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life, 332
• The tape recorder enables reclaiming lost aural discrimination #corroborates (0.80) — Schafer, Murray R, The Soundscape- Our Sonic Environment…, 508
• Found-sound music evokes orphaned memories belonging to anonymous others #expands (0.75) — Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life, 336