Stone Remains from Pavement Saints by Mournel

# About This Track: Stone Remains

Fragments of forgotten monuments whisper through magnetic tape on this expedition into urban decay's quieter corners. We captured these sounds at the periphery of an old cemetery where broken headstones had been repurposed as makeshift foundations—sacred geometry supporting the weight of neglect.

The marble percussion emerged organically when we discovered a fallen column partially buried beneath decades of urban sediment. Each tap against its weathered surface revealed different tones depending on where moss had colonized or where rain had carved microscopic channels. These textures form the backbone of "Stone Remains"—a meditation on how memory persists in physical form long after names have faded.

During mixing, we deliberately allowed city sounds to bleed through—distant sirens and subway rumbles create tension against the more contemplative field recordings gathered in the burial ground itself. This reflects our growing fascination with boundaries: between sacred and forgotten, between preservation and ruin. The Gravekeepers' ancient duty of watching over names becomes especially poignant when those names no longer have designated caretakers.

The string elements were recorded inside an abandoned mausoleum using a century-old viola we found at an estate sale. Its slightly warped neck and loosened strings created natural dissonance that seemed to echo the tension between remembrance and erasure that defines these liminal spaces.

We owe much to the pioneering work of Chris Watson, whose approach to environmental recording taught us to listen beyond the obvious. Where others hear silence, there is always the subtle symphony of dissolution and persistence.

We listen for graves breathing and make those sounds into music. Forgotten crypts, drowned tombstones, moss-swallowed bones—our recorders capture what lies under silence. Memory refuses to vanish. We preserve what whispers from broken stones.