Alarm Bells Ringing

It was while living at an apartment in Central London,located at a crossroad,that advertising professional Rajeev Basu would feel the din of traffic at all times of the day.

It was while living at an apartment in Central London,located at a crossroad,that advertising professional Rajeev Basu would feel the din of traffic at all times of the day. His days and nights were all about constant blaring of car horns,rumble of trucks and police sirens. Over a period of time,he just gave in to the noise,which was an inevitable part of the urban soundscape.

Thats when I thought: what if I take the sounds that people dislike and turn them into something they might enjoy?, says Basu,27,who has come up with Eep Eep Eep EP a music project comprising tracks that have used the most annoying sounds one can think of,and converted them into music. Basu,who now lives in Colorado,calls this music a form of electro-acoustic music that reels out of things that cannot qualify as musical instruments.

As he set out on the project,Basu floated around a question on the Internet: can you turn the annoying sounds of the project into music?. Musicians and sound engineers from almost 19 countries responded to the alarm pack created by him. Their challenge was to use these alarms as instruments to create harmonious melodies, says Basu.

The sounds were fed through various effect devices to make them sound like they do now.

The album Eep Eep Eep EP opens with a track titled A Day that uses school fire alarms,car horns,an eighties-style

digital alarm clock and watch beeps and has been remixed by London-based Michael Manning. This is followed by Alarming Tendencies,a track by Berlin-based David Kamp,who modulated the alarm frequency after stretching the sound and then layered its various versions. Then there is Big EEP that uses car horns,fire truck sounds and police siren,thus making every track an original remix of alarms. The album can be heard on iTunes and can be bought at http://www.rajeevbasu.com.

Basu,who studied Economics at Durham University,UK,considers India a great inspiration and has figured this over his various visits to Kolkata. Maybe,India could have its own

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version of this project only with the car horns, he says.

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Alarm Bells Ringing

It was while living at an apartment in Central London,located at a crossroad,that advertising professional Rajeev Basu would feel the din of traffic at all times of the day.

It was while living at an apartment in Central London,located at a crossroad,that advertising professional Rajeev Basu would feel the din of traffic at all times of the day.