"Terrorists travel with only one thing in mind, just like the tourist,
and the specifics of places escape them both".

Andrei Codrescu, The Tourist, 1990

Bell: “You can’t take my photograph.”
Charlton: “Oh, I’m sorry, you believe it will take your spirit away.”
Bell: “No, you’ve got the lens cap on.”

Crocodile Dundee, 1986

Reviews...

"Bristol-based improviser and sound recordist Seth Cooke has performed music by the likes of Michael Finnissy, Michael Pisaro, Sarah Hughes, and Manfred Werder, but his own work takes off in a direction leaving its own distinctive contrails in its wake. He often uses a technique he calls ‘no-input field recording’, the precise ins and outs of which I’m unfamiliar with, but which seems to be as much a conceptual device as a technical one. Judging from the results heard on “Sightseer”, his new release for Organised Music from Thessaloniki, the intention seems to be to dig deep into field recording as a general practice, into its assumptions, tendencies, and points of anxiety, and to do so in a reflexive and critical manner. “Sightseer” is a short collection of audio postcards, reminiscent of a travelogue perhaps, bringing together some familiar though perhaps not always obvious travelling sounds: ocean waves breaking, lifts going up and down, the scrunch of packaging, and so on. There are also lots of varieties of broadband noise, which is presumably where the no-input aspect makes itself heard. Cooke is well aware of the colonialist leanings inherent in the collection and playback of exotic ‘souvenir’ sounds, the drive to delimit and categorise and thus integrate audible things into a rubric that is understood and controlled. He attempts to distance himself from this problem through the use of irony, evident in track titles such as “Fake Tan” and “Santa Barbara Christian Field Recording Association”, but also in numerous jump cuts, unusual sound sources, and the afore-mentioned no-input technique. At least, this is the impression I get from listening (and reading the titles). And yet, there seems to be another movement at work, a counter-gesture, which creates an opening just big enough for the sounds on the record to effect an escape from both the normative assumptions of field recording and the abyss of irony offered as their negation. It’s almost as if the two forces cancel each other out, leaving acoustic material to make a bee-line for the horizon. Attempts to pin these clatters, scrapes, wooshes and whistles onto this or that system of signification (ironic, essentialist, transcendental, literalist, etc.) only end up making tiny holes for them to leak through, which isn’t to say that the systems they traverse on their way out are left undisturbed by their passage. I’m guessing that Cooke is aware of this, and chooses to deploy irony not to mock, deflate, or save face, but to set out the pieces for something more interesting to take place. I’m enjoying hearing the game unfold." Fluid Radio

"A sound diary of sorts, an alternative holiday brochure for the forgotten/ignored, photos replaced with scribbled interference, making you feel like that kid in Poltergeist, hands on the glass of the TV, hypnotised by the maggoty glare... an asthmatic register of a space/spaces, a document of agitated betweens, the sort of stuff sound engineers fervently consign to the editing dustbin which Dif Juz coined “the vibrating air,” here caught between the externals of the microphone and internal life bloods of the mixer, mingling, cross-pollinating in grainy exchanges. In later tracks you hear water rolling, roaring, like it’s trying to detune itself, morph into something beyond, switching channels for the machine to weave its invisible hypno threads; even the perceived silences are eerie, resonating with charge, contrasting beautifully with the hot bubbling bounce of the noisier moments." Freq

"A disconcerting tapestry of noise... These waves of static often mask tantalising sounds, messages from the aether... the sonic detritus of everyday life rendered opaque and mysterious... I can’t quite make out whether these pieces are a comment on surveillance – are we following a terrorist, or spying on our own citizens? – or a reflection on the impossibility of capturing one’s experiences of a place, like over-exposed holiday snaps." We Need No Swords

"The mood is lonely, with voyeuristic overtones... a faceless individual impassively views a seaside location, now devoid of human life. A sense of disquiet is achieved as a recording of, essentially, nothing is gradually enhanced with surgical precision only to be abruptly cut off just as it starts to become uncomfortable then switched for grizzled distortion swiftly followed by ghostly tones receding dimly. I have to say the more I listen to this, the more impressed I am with the craft and thought that has gone into it. Seth has used the format of a 3″ disc to fit in a lot of ideas though it never feels overcrowded... Seth’s sounds are clear and shrapnel sharp with abrupt editing and unexpected changes in colour and tone." radio free midwich

"Intriguing in a semi-voyeuristic way... the pieces' titles and the snippets of sound they offer make you wonder about their contexts, stories, etc." Wire

"Culled straight from the machine and onto the release... the beauty lies in the selection of these sounds and putting them in the right order... cut exactly to the right length." Vital Weekly