Microphone in hand,

I sit inside the old church,

Gathering silence.

(Haiku written by Ian Joyce)

Gathering Silence by Audio Obscura is Naviar’s first solo release of 2019.

Recording as Audio Obscura, Neil spent 3 years making field recordings in desolate churches in rural Norfolk (UK), a process through which he realised that “mindfulness can come through sound recording – through listening rather than the breath”.

“In July 2015 my family and I moved from London to rural north Norfolk. Our house was about a mile down a lane surrounded by fields and past the lane was a small village called Stratton Strawless, with a lovely old country church. I walked there a lot that first summer, often with our baby in a pushchair and took my digital sound recorder to record the old harmonium I had noticed in the corner of the church. On that trip I also recorded the church resonances and used contact mics on any suitable surfaces.

Getting to know Norfolk I realised that the writer W.G Sebald was buried not too far away and so made a trip and made a field recording at his grave at St. Andrews church. A few months later I made some recordings in Norwich Cathedral and so, without realising it, I started a little collection of Norfolk Churches. By the end of 2015 I decided to make it a project; to visit and document in sound recordings some of the rural churches, both inside and around the graveyards.