MJ O'Neill - 932 Sirens (2024)

932 Sirens is assembled from material drawn from 'Large-Scale Audio Dataset for Emergency Vehicle Sirens and Road Noises' by Muhammad Usaid, Muhammad Asif, Tabarka Rajab, Samreen Hussain, Sheikh Muhammad Munaf, and Sarwar Wasi.

932 Sirens is not a recording with a straightforward ideology. In some ways, it's an attempt to convey my lifelong experience of the world. In others, it's a reflection of living in a world in a state of near-constant collapse. In a very real way, it's an attempt to appropriately acknowledge the genocide of Palestine.

A siren is a strange singularity at the heart of a million networks. It can signify that help is on the way. It can be a sound of violence approaching. It can be a helpful warning to flee for safety. A crowd of us can hear the same siren and, in that one sound, separately hear all of the above and more.

For me, sirens have always felt oddly comforting. For over thirty years, I unknowingly lived in the throes of a severe and sustained allergic attack. When your nervous and circulatory systems are inexplicably in a state of perpetual distress, sirens feel like a confusing world fleetingly making sense.

When I began to assemble 932 Sirens, I mostly did so out of a gleeful sense of curiosity and a certain adolescent love of mischief-making. On the other side of that process, I found a bunch of feelings and sensations I didn't expect. Whatever sirens have been for you, I hope you find some joy in the project.