I never thought I’d get emotional at the sound of an automated announcement reading out station stops on the Southern service from Victoria to East Grinstead, but here we are. I’m listening to Real Life, an album that over the course of 50 minutes takes me on a train ride to Gatwick airport, bustles me aboard numerous flights and drops me off at various points around the globe — from the souks of Marrakech and the Pushkar ghats in India, to the urban menageries of New York, São Paulo and beyond.
It’s the work of Steve Spiro, previously a producer and remixer for the likes of Pet Shop Boys and Talk Talk, who now releases music under the alias Frequent Traveller. This latest album takes field recordings gathered during trips he made over the course of 18 months, and mixes them with music inspired by each of those locations. In Liquid Sunshine, dubby basslines and reggae rhythms mingle alongside sounds from a chaotic Kingston street, while on The Brazilian, bossa nova guitars and zesty horns are electrified by the celebratory mayhem of the Morumbi football stadium on matchday.
It’s all magically transportative, thanks in part to the bursting vibrance of the subject material, but also the way in which it was recorded. Spiro used a Sennheiser headset that featured the brand’s Ambeo technology, with tiny microphones on each earpiece picking up binaural sound — in other words, they produce 360-degree soundscapes that recreate noise in exactly the same way the human ear hears it.
It really is quite something to experience, and needs to be listened to through headphones for the full effect. The big moments are captured in incredible, layered detail — the clattering voices of Moroccan street merchants, or the cacophony of beeping taxis and hurtling subway carriages in New York — but it excels in plucking out subtle snatches too, like the snippets of eavesdropped conversations that appear and recede in an instant, or the rumble of luggage wheels on the airport floor.
Spiro had originally intended the album to be a slice of escapism for commuters looking for distraction during their arduous daily journeys — his last Frequent Traveller record in 2011, which also featured field recordings, was inspired by Spiro’s own commute to and from London. But in the current Covid context, when travel is all but impossible, Real Life takes on a whole new skin.
It’s the reason why that automated station announcement on the first track, Trains, hits me quite so hard. Immediately I’m taken along on my own oft-repeated journey, the one I’d always make from Waterloo station back to my parents’ house, where I grew up. Usually, a disembodied voice telling me that the 17.39 service to Portsmouth Harbour was departing from platform 15 would be eminently forgettable — now, such a thing is an unexpectedly heartbreaking reminder of just how little I’ve seen my family and friends this year.
There are other uncomfortable moments on the album, such as Devil's Trying To Break Us Down, in which Spiro wanders along Venice Beach in Los Angeles and stumbles across hate preachers spitting homophobic bile. It’s an honest portrayal of time spent abroad — not every jaunt is entirely painless — but for the most part, Real Life is a love letter to travel, both the journey and the destination. The in-flight announcements that punctuate the album spark those flickers of excitement you feel when preparing for take-off, and the whooshing rumble of a landing plane on Touchdown NYC inspires that wide-eyed wonder of arriving someplace new.
“It just seems like such a befitting time to release [the album],” Spiro tells me. “Giving people a chance to escape around the world and just completely lose themselves for 50 minutes seems like a great opportunity. I’m really pleased it’s coming out now, and I hope people really like it.”
There are some quieter, more contemplative moments, too. The final track, Here Inside Me, is based in London and starts off on the C10 bus to Tate Britain — featuring those oh-so-familiar beeps of the closing doors, of course. But when the song enters the gallery itself, it transforms into a meditation of ambient piano music.
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“I wanted to capture the sound of silence,” says Spiro, “because there is a sound in silence, especially when you listen to it in 360-degree field. You kind of feel the space.
“I went to the gallery one rainy Sunday and just walked around. It’s just the little gentle shuffle of footsteps and the murmur of people as they walk around, but you get a sense of the echo and the sparseness of the place.”
While the parts of the album set abroad feel thrillingly otherworldly, it’s these moments closer to home that are especially bittersweet. Hopefully, before too long, the galleries will reopen, and so will the rest of the world. Until then, put on your headphones, close your eyes, listen to Real Life and go on a different kind of journey.
Real Life is out on Music For Headphones/Blurred Recordings on November 6. Visit instagram.com/frequenttravellerofficial for more information
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