Chris Watson plans field-recordings-based mobile app for September release

Chris Watson plans field-recordings-based mobile app for September release

The music app game is getting a little crowded these days. Everybody and their brother is like, “Hey instead of making an album let’s just make an app and move to San Francisco and fly around in internet planes and buy Uber drivers with Google dollars and so on and so forth,” you know? I mean, to be fair, apps are pretty cool. And so, Chris Watson, the eminent field-recordist (and founding member of Cabaret Voltaire), and dude who was at the top of my list for people who I predicted would be next to dive into this exciting (not to mention disruptive) field, has decided to take a little slice of that “apps are cool” pie for himself with a new one of his own called Nimbus.

According to The Wire, the app was built by The Nimbus Group, and it’s planned for release in conjunction with the Brighton Digital Festival on September 10. In addition to including 14 pieces that Watson has recorded throughout his career with Touch Music (such as last year’s lovely In St. Cuthbert’s Time), the app also contains four audio-based games. One requires the player to use directional audio from within the app to navigate to a specific location, another uses the “north-south auditory axis,” the third is simply described as a “collection of sounds for insomniacs,” and the fourth apparently only unlocks if the user is somehow traveling at least as fast as a diving peregrine falcon (which is 300 km per hr or about 190 miles per hour). Unconfirmed sources from within the app developer community have told me that the game can also be unlocked by inviting your friends to play Candy Crush at a rate roughly equivalent to the speed of a sprinting cheetah (about 75 miles per hour). The app will be available for iOS and Android.

• Chris Watson: http://www.chriswatson.net
• The Nimbus Group: http://the-nimbus-group.org/2014

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