Borrowed atmosphere ?

Borrowed atmosphere (rather known as borrowed scenery) describes "the creative deployment" of audio environment in compositions. Wanted or unwanted sounds find their way into music and thus delivering more "richness and a different perspective" in the piece.

Reading the book "Haunted Weather" by David Toop, I came across the Japanese term "SHAKKEI" which means "borrowed scenery". Predominantly "SHAKKEI" is related to the principles of Japanese garden architecture, using the surrounding landscape (e.g. the sky) as an incorporated part of the garden itself.

For Japanese composer Toru Takemitsu "SHAKKEI" stands for a "musical device" in which "adjacent or distant scenery is incorporated as an integral part of the [musical] design".

In some of my tracks (Colaural, Valluga Icono), borrowed atmosphere / scenery can be found, too. It all starts with fieldrecordings. Serving not only as a simple background sample or decoration, the fieldrecordings (digitally altered) affect the entire piece. All other elements in the track stand in relation to the sounds which I just borrowed from outside. A distant beat slowly arises out of several voices - imagine people talking in a railway station - which is afterwards drowned by departing or arriving trains. The music slides through the (borrowed) scenery, sometimes it gets melted with it; sometimes the music disappears into unknown spaces (of the recording) in order to be woken up by the steps of somebody running down the gate. The whole scenery has turned into a soundscape.