Cashmere Specials – Really Sound – UdK SoundS Compilation Release live from After

After kindly hosted a listening session of Really Sound, a compilation collecting 18 tracks by students in the Sound Studies and Sonic Arts program at Universität der Künste Berlin, which are played intervowen with artist talks moderated by Jack Savidge, the initiator of the project, released this week via Bandcamp. The session was broadcast and recorded live at After on Wednesday July 15, 2026.

Really Sound was conceived as a positive outlook in response to the announcement of the Sound Studies and Sonic Arts program’s closure in 2026. The contributing artists come from diverse professional backgrounds and share an experimental approach to working with sound. Their variety of perspectives in the sonic arts is showcased here. A range of tracks follow an electroacoustic composition paradigm, working with synthesizers or sampling, with processed field recordings or realizing EDM styles as well as deconstructing them in conceptual takes. Other contributions are improvisations combining live electronics with an instrument or the voice. Some explore the narrative possibilities of speech and music, as well as political commentary. Many tracks are based on complex processes or relationships to different art forms like sound installation or experimental film. When presented acousmatically as audio-only tracks, they leave their visual component behind taking on the status of music. Similarly, data-sonification from traveling or sensors appears as musical sound. Rather than offering a single definition of what is "really sound” or what “sound really is”, this compilation proposes listening as an act of discovery. Each track opens a different perspective on how sound can signify, evoke, transform, transduce, and transgress.  In addition to its digital drop, the compilation will be released as a DIY limited edition of 100 CDs, featuring artwork by Lise Sutter, and liner notes by Jan Thoben and Julia Schröder. The album was mastered by Kassian Troyer at Dubplates & Mastering.

about.sounds.berlin

reallysound.bandcamp.com