Hallways by Hello Spiral

Hello Spiral returns to the same North London block, the same triangulated geometry of balconies and courtyard, but with a shift of orientation. His previous record looked outward from the eighth floor, these four new recordings move inside, into the building’s arteries. Joe explores the hallways of the complex where he has lived and listened for years, using the same tool as before, an iPhone and its voice memo app. The recordings were made in situ, each exactly eleven minutes, captured without ceremony.

The hallways feel different. Less private, less scenic, more neutral. They are the connective tissue between hundreds of domestic units, a space of transit rather than rest. The carpet absorbs certain frequencies. The fire doors catch and release pockets of air. The lights hum. Elevators drone in soft cycles of arrival and departure. These are the institutional sounds of shared living, yet once recorded they begin to behave strangely. A kind of internal weather appears.

As with the previous album, Joe remains attentive to what is often overlooked, irrelevant or discarded. The hallways, with their scuffs and signage, their coded access and polite functionalism, provide an unexpectedly rich field. The ambience is not shaped by storms or scaffolding, not by birds or street spill. Instead the material is the building’s own breath, its mechanical rhythms, the low frequency traces of neighbours, the occasional shuffle of footsteps that pass but do not return.

Joe talks about this record as a possible middle chapter in a trilogy. If so, it sits between the exposed openness of the balcony and whatever comes next. A hinge point. These recordings continue Joe’s long practice of defamiliarization, sharpening attention to the unnoticed while withholding narrative. They invite repeated listening, not for revelation, but for the subtle shifts that occur when a familiar space is treated as an instrument.

Joe says:

The first of these recordings was captured outside the front door of my flat. I'd been putting off going outside all day to get various tasks done and now enough was enough. On many previous occasions I'd opened my front door to be met with groaning wind noises which elusively would fade and refuse to return once I hit record. This time they kept coming back, with gusto! Most of them were coming from under the door of the flat opposite my own.

As usually happens when I end up in an ideal recording situation, I start to become hyper aware of the other sounds around me and then a kind of bloody mindedness sets in to see how long we (I) will keep this going for. A (musical) narrative emerges, and now it is up to me to decide when that narrative ends.

It was halfway through this recording that I realised I had promised Jacob a follow up to the balcony recordings, and now here I was on the other side of my flat, pointing inwards, and recording. It was perfect.

I was quite astonished to make it the full 11mins with no interruptions, and the men coming off the elevator and discussing 'on a human level that's default' before walking away from me seemed like Chance had sent me its blessing for this project.

It then seemed natural to me to explore other floors of this building. I've lived here 3.5 years now but have had no cause to go to any other levels beyond my floor (the top, floor 8) or Ground Floor (floor 2)

It's a very impersonal building, almost 300 flats. You know the faces of the 3-5 neighbours surrounding you but it goes no further than a nod and a smile if you see each other in the hallway.

So my presence in these other floors technically wouldn't have been an issue, nonetheless I felt very self conscious and like I would be almost sniffed out as someone who is somewhere he shouldn't be, doing something he shouldn't be doing

Which is why I decided to do the other three recordings in the early hours. Between 2am and 6am.
Each one was recorded outside of the front door of a flat directly below mine.

It became an endurance test almost, with some meditative action thrown in.

Work up the courage to exit flat at a dead zone hour, take the elevator down to one of these unknown floors. Sit down on the ground outside a stranger's front door. And sit still, breathing shallowly, making as little noise as possible for 11mins.

Even at 4am you could hear people moving around in their flats. You were constantly waiting for someone to come out and ask you what the fuck are you doing?

The track order represents the structure of the building:

hallway I - floor 8, 18/09/25, 15:00
hallway II - floor 7, 21/09/25, 02:18

hallway IV - floor 1, 15/10/25, 04:37
hallway III - floor 0, 12/10/25, 05:47

I started at the top and went one floor down
then I started at the bottom and went one floor up
For now, the four floors in between: remain unknown.

A side note: My intention was to remove my presence from these recordings via some forensic editing. But Jacob argued his position for them to be left in, and I ended up agreeing with his take on things.

Discreet Archive was created for music, writing and artefacts that explore quietness. This can mean many things, we like music that allows for space, presents sonority as objects and is concerned with the materiality of sound, sound as thing. We occupy a world of noise, discerning meaning in this sea of noise is increasingly difficult. 

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