SOUNDS OF WAR
An attempt to explain the unexplainable — the sensory reality of war — purely through sound.
WAR IS HEARD BEFORE IT IS SEEN.
Sight arrives late to war. We see the victims, we see the aftermath, we see the places burning. But before that — there is the missile incoming. There is the silence of a city of three million, suddenly empty. There is the question: was that thunder, or artillery?
Days after the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine began in February 2022, Jakub Górnicki started to notice that the primary medium of war was not the image. It was the ear. He began recording.
Most war journalism records what you can see. This project records what you cannot — the sounds that precede, accompany, and survive the visible event. The recorder is the only instrument honest enough to catch them.
A car that was shot at. The microphone placed inside it. What remains is the ambience of aftermath.
A field recorder. A gunshot. The moment between hearing and understanding.
Put on headphones.
BEGINNING OF A FOOTBALL GAME
Ukraine continued playing football. The league did not stop. The stadiums were mostly empty.
EXPLOSION
Irpin. One of the first towns to be liberated. What remained was the sound of what happened there.
TV TOWER + ROCKET
The Kyiv TV tower was a target. The media continued broadcasting. In the same soundscape: a solo rocket.
This is not a collection of explosions. It is an attempt to document the full sonic texture of a country at war — the everyday and the terrifying, often inseparable.
Sounds of War is designed as a listening platform. Not a podcast. Not a documentary. A place where each recording stands alone, and the listener moves through them at their own pace.
The experience opens with Jakub's voice — twenty seconds explaining how to listen. Then the sounds begin. Swipe to the next. Or stay. The platform remembers where you stopped.
A special playlist gathers the songs that became symbols of this war: national anthems, the Bayraktar song, hymns that turned into resistance music.
World Premiere: May 10, 2026 · Madrid
These are not the recordings. These are the images that were visible while the microphone was running.
National anthem. Ukrainian stadium.
Philharmonic. Ukraine.