I took You There

« I Took You There » is inspired by trains… the trains and the stations of Europe that I have been through and recorded over the past few years from the trains of my youth that thundered past my bedroom window, and the imaginary trains or ‘ghost trains’ that Blaise Cendrars evokes in the ‘Prose of the Trans-Siberian'.

« I Took You There » could be interpreted as a journey, where reality intertwines with fiction. It begins with a story. Blaise Cendrars is caught out by a journalist who claims he has never set foot upon the infamous train, let alone undertaken the journey.  He answers calmly , « But Madame, I took you there »

Just like Cendrars’ prose the soundscape is fiction, not a document of real  life.
In « I Took You There » you will hear extracts from the Prose of the Trans-Siberian read by DinahBird, quotes from films by Brian De Palma, Stanley Kubrick, Andreï Tarkovski, Akira Kurosawa, and Artavazd Pelechian, a harmonica played in a tunnel 80 m under the earth, and lots of ghosts.

Jean-Philippe Renoult, November 2008.

'I took you there' was first broadcast on Kunst Radio as part of the Soundscape Forever series curated by SilenceRadio on Sunday 14th December 2008 at 11.05 pm (CEST).

To hear an extract from I Took You There click on the player above and scroll down.