The Foghorn's Lament: The Disappearing Music of the Coast
Jennifer Lucy Allan
May 2021 · White Rabbit · Narrated by Jennifer Lucy Allan
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8 hr 7 min
Unabridged
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About this audiobook
'A truly unusual and strangely revealing lens through which to view music and history and the dark life of the sea' Brian Eno
'As memorable, pleasurable and irrational as all the highest quests' John Higgs
What does the foghorn sound like?
It sounds huge. It rattles. It rattles you. It is a booming, lonely sound echoing into the vastness of the sea. When Jennifer Lucy Allan hears the foghorn's colossal bellow for the first time, it marks the beginning of an obsession and a journey deep into the history of a sound that has carved out the identity and the landscape of coastlines around the world, from Scotland to San Francisco.
Within its sound is a maritime history of shipwrecks and lighthouse keepers, the story and science of our industrial past, and urban myths relaying tales of foghorns in speaker stacks, blasting out for coastal raves.
Read by the author and featuring excerpts of her field recordings, The Foghorn's Lament is an odyssey told through the people who battled the sea and the sound, who lived with it and loathed it, and one woman's intrepid voyage through the howling loneliness of nature.
'As memorable, pleasurable and irrational as all the highest quests' John Higgs
What does the foghorn sound like?
It sounds huge. It rattles. It rattles you. It is a booming, lonely sound echoing into the vastness of the sea. When Jennifer Lucy Allan hears the foghorn's colossal bellow for the first time, it marks the beginning of an obsession and a journey deep into the history of a sound that has carved out the identity and the landscape of coastlines around the world, from Scotland to San Francisco.
Within its sound is a maritime history of shipwrecks and lighthouse keepers, the story and science of our industrial past, and urban myths relaying tales of foghorns in speaker stacks, blasting out for coastal raves.
Read by the author and featuring excerpts of her field recordings, The Foghorn's Lament is an odyssey told through the people who battled the sea and the sound, who lived with it and loathed it, and one woman's intrepid voyage through the howling loneliness of nature.
About the author
Jennifer Lucy Allan is an author, journalist and broadcaster with a PhD in foghorns. Her first book, The Foghorn's Lament, was published in May 2021. She is a presenter on BBC Radio 3's long running music show, Late Junction, and presented Life, Death and the Foghorn, and Oh Yoko! for BBC Radio 4. As a journalist she has written on underground and experimental music for over 15 years, and also co-ran the record labels Arc Light Editions and Good Energy.
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