Vertical London (New Year’s Day) by Kate Carr
Kate Carr, orginally from Australia but living and working in London, U.K. has created a world of her
own using field recordings, self made instrument set ups, exploring different ways of transforming
instruments and objects utilised to create new sounds and using them in her experimental
compositions.
Her new solo album creates a sort of a fulcrum where all here interests blend together and come to
the point where the listener might not be sure if this is a part of electro-acoustic composition, a
gallery sound installation or series of urban field recordings.
Open to many interpretations and rich in textures, nuances and beautiful little details which make
those compositions accessible to different types of listeners only make this album even better.
Multi-layered and not even for an ounce of a second losing its grip and attention towards
understanding a trajectory of a detail from a perspective of wider outlook of the whole composition
only make you feel to experience more of this magical beauty and intellectual sophistication as far as
the whole creative process goes.
On New Year’s Day this year I set off from my home in Loughborough Junction to undertake a rather
idiosyncratic journey. For a long time now I have wanted to try and trace a vertical trajectory in
London – and New Year's Day with its connotations of renewal and starting-over seemed just the
time to attempt to flee upwards, if you will.
The spine of this album is that journey from roughly minus 20 metres below sea level to 240 metres
above on that cold, short wintry day. It was a quiet day, by London standards, but not silent. It was
still a London of some bustle and activity. Of overheard moments and chance encounters involving
delivery drivers, commuters, tourists, taxis, tubes, buses, retail workers, joggers, crows, pigeons and
foxes.
As I traced my ascending route from the depths of the Victoria Line, to the Greenwich Foot Tunnel,
Soho, Bloomsbury, and upwards to Kilburn, Hampstead, Crystal Palace, The Eye and The Shard I was
struck by how reliant on all sorts of infrastructures this trip was. Electricity, gas, data, food, water, all
of these systems, some silent, others audible, were intertwined in one way or another with my
movement.
The recordings I took move from the electromagnetic hum of the underground and the DLR, delivery
trolleys and bicycles, the echoes of public piano recitals, quiet parks and ambiences from the
privatised spaces of the Eye and the Shard.
This is just one moment in London. One journey on one day by one person. A version of London
which is entangled with my own identity and recording practice. But it is also, I hope, a rendering of
the city which might in its strangeness or familiarity reverberate with the version of London you
carry inside of you, whether this is drawn from experience, fantasy or indifference.
My version is by turns fond, exasperated, frazzled, charmed, disappointed, hopeful, engaged and
alienated. All the colours of experience for this most intimate and visceral of relations: a journey
through the city I call home.
credits
releases July 17, 2026
Music by Kate Carr
Mastering by Kate Carr
Design by Matthew Young and Louise Mason
Artist Statement
My work centres on articulating our relationships with each other and the spaces we move through
using sound. I am particularly interested in the ways sound contours our experiences of the world,
and how we deploy it to connect, occupy, immerse and remove ourselves from locations, events and
each other.
I am a field recordist, and this practice of recording in public spaces informs all of my work, alongside
the building and use of instruments assembled from collected and discarded objects. Everything
from vibrations caused by cars and footfalls to indistinct murmurs, music in public space, and the
distant roar of sporting events has found its way into my compositions, performances and
installations. In its variety, layers and obscurations, the ways in which we collectively produce our
soundscape continues to inspire me.
As part of this interest, I have recently developed a practice involving the creation of sonic transects.
These projects involve tracing trajectories through space using sound, field recording and
performative actions with objects, offering an experiential account of some of the ways we move
through and inhabit the world.
Bio
Kate Carr’s practice explores the encounters, textures and technologies entangled with field
recording through movement, the collecting and use of objects as performance tools, and
experimental recording techniques. She creates intimate, delicate and hybrid soundworlds that
centre the interactions and forms of collectivity through which soundscapes are generated. Working
across composition, performance and installation, her work draws on everything from vibrations
caused by cars and footfalls to overheard murmurs, public speeches, music in public space, and the
distant roar of sporting events.
In her live and installation work, Carr increasingly examines the ambiguities of field recording,
developing a practice that blurs live foley work with field recording techniques. She builds and
performs with instruments assembled from collected and discarded objects - ranging from scientific
rockers, massage guns, bird horns, frog rattles and watering cans to bug clickers and hand-built noise
boxes made from found materials such as rubbish, rubber bands and everyday detritus. Composing
with these materials, she aims to trouble the associations of authenticity often attached to field
recording, and its opposition to the sonic fictions of foley. Inspired by the layers, minglings and
silences of our collective soundscapes, Carr is interested in composing works that probe sound as a
way of understanding how we negotiate living together. She is particularly focused on hybrid
soundscapes, where forest meets town, nuclear power plant meets wetland, and booming car
stereos meet residential streets.
Kate regularly performs in the UK and Europe including Donaueschingen Musiktage (Germany),
Rainy Days Festival (Luxembourg), Oscillations Festival (Brussels), Bone X Iklectik (Barcelona), Sonic
Territories (Vienna), The Long Now at Kraftwerk (Berlin) and Supernormal in the UK. Other notable
live performances include Barbican, Tate Modern, Whitechapel Gallery, Instants Chavires (Paris) and
AB Salon (Brussels). As part of her practice she also runs the sound art imprint Flaming Pines. In 2022
she founded the sound art duo Rubbish Music with Iain Chambers. Her music can be found on the
labels Room 40 (Australia), Persistence of Sound (UK), Mana Records (UK), Helen Scarsdale (US),
Hasana Editions (Indonesia), Longform Editions (Australia) as well as at her own label Flaming Pines.
In 2022 Carr also began composing and performing as part of the duo Rubbish Music with Iain
Chambers where the pair construct and perform soundscapes from discarded objects. This live work
has seen Carr and Chambers performing with shampoo bottles, toilet plungers, oven grills and rusty
saucepans. Along with Cath Roberts, Carr is also in the new duo Quartz Sand, with Stratigraphy, their
debut album out in 2025.
She has also been commissioned to produce new work for Late Junction and The Verb on BBC radio
3, and her works has been featured on BBC radio 6, The World Service, NPR and BBC radio 3. In print
her work has been covered by The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Telegraph, Pitchfork and
The Wire among other publications.
Carr is Australian, and lives in London.
https://katecarr.bandcamp.com/album/vertical-london-new-year-s-day
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