Tim Whitt is a collector of sounds. As a foley artist, it was a fortunate addiction to always have a microphone at the ready to record whatever ambience occurs in his day-to-day life.

It was through working on commercial projects, like providing sound effects for a Pacman reboot and designing music for Italian fashion label, Valentino, and the Philadelphia 76ers NBA team, that he narrowed down the kind of music he’d like to create for himself.

“It was handy, being able to get my creativity out in that way. For all of these projects, I got to make all these different kinds of music,” Whitt says.

“I just love so many different styles of music… I’ll start making really hard rock music, and then go into some country music or some folk music, and then I’ll want to start making some electronic music, and there’s no way of joining them all together.

“Making my own music, I realised I got too caught up in trying to make music for other people: ‘what does it need to sound like?’ So I started making music for myself, and I started doing things with no expectations, and it kind of turned into this.”

Whitt’s sophomore effort, Geisel, due for release on 13 October, is a soundscape carved of Adelaide itself, with the artist digging into his extensive collection of ambient recordings from around the city, and also drawing from his network of local musicians.

“As I was making the album, there was this whole direction and theme that evolved, like the things that I found surrounded me in my life,” Whitt says.

“I kept an open ear for things…I spent a day walking around Bowden, rattling factory fences and tapping on them with sticks, chains on gates, working them around and recording all of the sounds they made.

“[And] the everyday sounds I would hear, like the tram and crowds and stuff like that… I started recording them and making music, and then I got 11 different musicians to help collaborate on the project, layering stuff over the top.”

As much as Adelaide is an integral part of the Geisel, he also wanted the work to be a reflection on how he and his collaborators fit into the city.

The inspiration for this direction came through Whitt reading the suicide note of the album’s namesake, Helen Geisel, an author and the wife of famed children’s author, Dr Seuss.

“It’s this really sad letter about how she felt so down that she could never be happy again, and how disconnected she felt from the world. That’s what got me thinking about how I was connecting with the world around me,” he says.

“I sat [my collaborators] down and I said the point of this album is how you feel that you fit into your world around you… and then they went off and wrote their own stuff, and all of these different aspects related to their own lives in Adelaide.

“Having that lyrical element helped tie everything in, like a nice little bow – all the sounds came from Adelaide, all the lyrics were written about Adelaide.”

The album’s release will also have a strong tie to the city; Whitt is working with Adelaide tech company, Wandering Sound, to release the album through an app they’ve developed that will allow people to listen to the album as they walk through the city.

Whitt is currently in the process of picking locations that match the feel of each track of the album, and on 14 October he plans on giving a guided tour through the album.

“I’m trying to find really unique locations, backstreets and back alleys, where there’s this really interesting feel or a really interesting mural or piece of street art that you normally wouldn’t find, and just trying to encourage people to go there and experience the music and the city in a completely different way,” Whitt says.

Geisel will be released on 13 October, stay tuned to Tim Whitt’s Facebook page for updates on the Wandering Sound release event. Lead single from the album, Sleep at Night, is available to listen to at Soundcloud.