Welcome to Phonographies

Phonographies is an audio archive of contemporary wax cylinder recordings, recorded and curated by Aleks Kolkowski and featuring a wide range of musicians, improvisers, composers, writers and artists. The sounds and music heard on this site are digital transfers taken…

Photo © Sarah Fairclough

Recorded at the London Science Museum, June 28th, 2012.  * Recording arriving soon * Nahum Mantra – Theremin. Nahum Mantra is an artist, composer and multi-instrumentalist. He lives between London and Mexico City and works in the intersection of the…

Gramophone Magazine Feature

In June 2012, Gramophone Magazine published a feature on the Phonographies live wax cylinder recording sessions that took place at the London Science Museum in May and June. You can view it here and also listen to a recording made…

Jonathan Sterne

Recorded at the London Science Museum, June 23rd, 2012. Jonathan Sterne reads an extract from from the introduction to his book: MP3: The Meaning of a Format. “At the moment I write this sentence, there are about 10 million people…

Photo © Helen Petts

In his role as the Science Museum’s sound artist-in-residence, Aleks Kolkowski will demonstrate the art of sound recording onto wax cylinders using a hand-cranked Edison phonograph in a new series of regular live recording sessions that are open to the…

© A.Kolkowski

Recorded in London, November 27th 2011. Self-Made Percussion Instruments Rie Nakajima is an artist, originally from Yokohama, who lives and works in London. She studied art history and aesthetics at Tokyo National University of Fine Arts and Music, and sculpture…

Photo: © A. Kolkowski

The entire first series of eight half-hour programmes devoted to the Phonographies archive will be repeated on Mondays to Fridays from 19th until 28th of December 2011. Many unpublished wax cylinders that are not featured in the archive are also…

© Caroline Forbes

Photo: © Caroline Forbes Recorded at Bates Mill, Huddersfield, November 18th 2011 Recording Notes This wax cylinder was originally made for Evan Parker’s improvisatory piece Tesserae, devised for the ensemble and directed by him and commissioned by the Huddersfield Contemporary…

© Caroline Forbes

Photo © Caroline Forbes Recorded at St. Peter’s Church, Whitstable, U.K, July 15th  2009 Bow Echo –  Improvisation Aleks Kolkowski and Ute Wassermann first came together as an improvising duo in Berlin, 2003. They have since performed in Germany, The…

© A. Kolkowski

Recorded in London, July 28th 2011. Urtext Urtext is part of my Catalogue irraisoné, a collection of 12 pieces for solo voice which I wrote between 1999 and 2000. In turn Catalogue irraisoné is part of my ensemble installation Everything…