My brother Daniel – “self-made, semi-retired amateur lichenologist who likes to ride his bike in obscure and difficult places and stop many times to partake of the local specialities of coffee and cake” – has just recently released his Sounds of the Silk Road album via bandcamp, currently only available on digital download. It’s an audio record of his cycle trip a decade ago where he travelled the old Silk Road through Turkey, Iran, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, China, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, India and Nepal.

Before he left a friend gave him a hand-held digital audio recorder to record memorable sounds, and Daniel recorded hundreds of them, from backgammon players and calls to prayer in Istanbul to women chatting in India and tropical storms in Laos.

Here’s what Daniel says about the sounds and the trip on his bandcamp blurb:

“The idea was to record sounds that would captivate the essence of life in these countries and maybe more importantly the sounds that would make this journey memorable to me when I listened to these recordings in years to come, and I believe would be an insight into worlds that many other people are interested in too.

The Silk Road crosses many countries, and there were many different roads spanning along different landscapes and cultures, but for me, my main motivation was to visit the ancient lands of the Stans of Central Asia, and to fulfil a lifelong dream of seeing the most incredible architecture and tile work the world has ever seen.
At the time I made hundreds of recording and recently narrowed it down to these 81 you have here, they are a strange mix, even haphazard sometimes but there is a theme. As the Silk Road that I chose to follow passes through mostly Islamic nations so the recordings also reflect the cultures I chose to travel through. The call to prayer, prayer recitals, chantings, many religious daily rituals are reproduced here. But also, people live there lives and the fascinating daily lives of others who speak different languages is also captivated here, people chatting in the street, playing traditional games, banter, people playing music, watching TV and listening to the radio.

It’s interesting how we live and what we do to make up this life, this is the essence of this album.”

• Best listened to when scrolling through Daniel’s thousands of Flickr photos at Al Warda

Previously on Barnflakes
My brother’s top 12 Japanese films
Between air and water: the collages of Daniel Attwell
White clouds, dark skins
Subterranean Stockholm Syndrome
Souvenir from Iran
Stairway to Hairven