Name: Amazing Weddell seal sounds below the Antarctic ice by 🌎🌍
Duration: 3 h 10 min 48 s
Description: Compiled with recordings from the Macaulay Library.

On 22 September 2022, about 10 million current and former customers (40% of Australia's population) of Australian telecommunications giant Optus (a subsidiary of Singapore Telecommunications Ltd) had personal data stolen in what Optus called a "cyber-attack". Some experts say that this may be the worst data breach in Australia's history.

Track image credit: https://www.bay939.com.au/news/local-news/136666-geelong-optus-customers-data-leaked

2022.09.22 OPTUS_DATA_BREACH

Best listened to with good quality headphones: binaural recording. Two Boobooks getting to know each other (a third faintly in the distance, occasionally); and a koala.

Credit for inset photo of a pair of Boobook Owls: © Richard Jackson. Location: Engadine, New South Wales, Australia. March 2016. https://www.owlpages.com/owls/species.php?i=958. Background image: First light at Montacute CP, by Hearing Beings.

2022.10.21 Two Boobook Owls. Night. Spring.

I've been wanting to make a clear dawn recording in this forest for a long time, and had made several earlier but unsatisfactory attempts. The problem, of course, given the location of this forest, is acute permeability to environing anthropogenic noise. I gave it another go on this very calm, still Thursday night/Friday morning: a very unlikely time of week, to be sure, and just three weeks after that accursed Daylight Saving had kicked in! The result isn't perfectly 'pure', but it's much better than I had hoped or expected; and at least it documents the voice of this lovely lifeworld (where I have often walked, sat, and listened, both by day and by night), and provides the chance to share it.

Best listened to with good quality headphones (preferably open-backed, with a flat frequency response): binaural recording. Recorded on the land of the Kaurna and Ngadjuri peoples.

2022.10.21 Forest Dawn. Spring.

For some time, my son has wanted to go camping in Gluepot Reserve with me (he's never been there), so we set off in his car one Friday morning. Unfortunately, the dirt road into Gluepot was still impassable, due to heavy rains in previous weeks. Plan B required another three to four hours more driving. We ended up having to stay the first night at Stony Creek Bush Camp Caravan Park, but I was pleasantly surprised and delighted by the variety of birds singing during the evening chorus in the surrounding bushland. Evening was not a good time to record; and besides, this was not really supposed to be a field recording trip, although it did serve as a good location reconnaissance trip; but I couldn't resist setting up an overnight rig in the bush to record the ensuing dawn chorus. With highways only two to three kilometres away on three sides, and quite a few people staying in the campground, I didn't hope for much of a longer soundscape recording; but I knew that at least I'd get some good bird song and bird call samples. As it turned out, most other campers slept in that morning, and highway traffic wasn't quite as bad as I'd expected. The resultant dawn recording, while 'imperfect', seemed to me well worth sharing.

2022.10.29 Stony Creek Dawn. Spring.

On Saturday, 12 November 2022, South Australia, including the whole Adelaide region, experienced an uncharacteristic extended storm of unusual intensity. Several storm fronts, arriving from the NW over St Vincent's Gulf, hit Adelaide and the Fleurieu Peninsula. The storm has been described as "one of the strongest thunderstorms in recent memory",* causing flash flooding, wind gusts exceeding 100 km/h that tore down huge gum trees (many of which crushed houses, cars, and electricity lines), as well as flattening giant electricity pylons, leaving around a hundred thousand people without power. 

This recording, made in the Adelaide Hills (near Norton Summit), captures a sample of the first and mildest storm wavefront that day. (The recording begins at 10:30 in the morning. This abridged version selects two excerpts from the longer recording, chosen because of the poignant presence of bird calls audible between the peals of thunder. The highlighted parts of the spectrogram in the track image indicate the passages from the longer recording that were selected for this abridged version.) The microphones sheltered from the fairly light rain underneath a 'sweet pittosporum' or 'native daphne' tree (Pittosporum undulatum), native to southeastern Australia, but a 'declared plant' in South Australia ('a woody weed invading native local vegetation', due to widespread ornamental planting).

Travelling farther south immediately after this recording, I was able to intercept the next two wavefronts, which were far more intense. Although the storm was utterly awesome and spectacular (lightning bolts plunging into fields, exploding thunder tearing the atmosphere apart), it was impossible to find any spot from which to record the storm, because it brought with it an abundant lashing downpour of rain and wild tree-tossing winds. In the end, I could only just sit and experience it. Which, after all, is the very best thing to do, with Nature. (Most of the time, at least. Not recommended when it gets this violent. Although I have to say that this was truly a very beautiful and awe-inspiring experience; and, personally, I'm very glad to have been out there to witness it. I'm also contemplating possible recording solutions, in case this ever happens again... Enraptured by thunderstorms as a spatial music of nature. All that I say here is the truth.)
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*https://www.weatherzone.com.au/news/why-the-adelaide-storm-was-so-intense/925471
https://www.sapowernetworks.com.au/data/313806/12-november-storm-update-from-sa-power-networks/
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/11/18/australias-indigenous-people-call-for-seat-at-table-at-cop27
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Recorded with respect upon the land of the Kaurna people.

Hear the long version

2022.11.12 Storm above the Hills. Late Spring. (Excerpt)

Why "A Secret Dawn"? Purely because I will not reveal the locations of places like this. Lately, I've been finding that national parks and conservations parks are nowadays, more and more, not necessarily the best places to record natural soundscapes, unless they are very remote. Not just because of anthropogenic noise, but also because of anthropogenic environmental damage. (No doubt increasingly heavy marketing by National Parks and Wildlife, especially to the 4WD mob, has had an impact, here. National Parks are not only valued as an ecological and environmental asset. They are also very highly valued as an economic commodity, to be marketed like any other. Where is the foresight? Foresight is a talent that, in general, I fear, my country very sadly lacks.) In any event, I very much do hope to be able to share with you future recordings from many other unnoticed and unexpected "secret locations" like this one.

An abridged version of this recording can be heard here: https://soundcloud.com/hearingbeings/20221211-a-secret-dawn-early-summer-abridged-version

Recorded respectfully on the land of the Kaurna people.

2022.12.11 A Secret Dawn. Early Summer. (Full Version)

↔ Ecology and Nature conservation ↔ Climate change and human energy management ↔ The human problem of war ↔

Technical notes: MKH 8020s AB 63 cm > MixPre-6 II. The jet was recorded at 96 kHz, 32-bit-float, with preamp gain at 45 dB. The maximum sample peak level was +33.27 dB. Since 32-bit-float recording provides virtually infinite headroom, there was no clipping; the waveforms are fully intact. However, to play the recording back at 24 bit depth, wave peaks must be reduced to 0 dB or less, because any peak above 0 dB will sound clipped. Normalising to 0 dB means that the highest peak is reduced to 0 dB: in this case, the entire recording - hence every wave peak - has to be reduced by -33.27 dB. The result is a fully intact recording, without any clipping. The problem is that the result just doesn't sound or feel anything like the actual sound event: it sounds, rather, as if the event were recorded from a great distance. Energy, proximity and viscerality are lost.

To regain a phenomenological realism, therefore, the normalised recording was loudness-adjusted; but increasing loudness naturally requires some degree of limiting to keep higher peaks at or below 0 dB and thus prevent the problem of clipping. There is definitely no clipping in the loudness-adjusted version; but, necessarily, there is some limiting. The overall result is far more phenomenologically faithful to the actual experience than is the merely normalised version. Which version a listener prefers may be a personal matter.

This version is the normalised (N) version (normalised to 0 dB). The other version can be heard here: https://soundcloud.com/hearingbeings/20221203-fa-18f-hornet-the-sound-of-the-brush-inking-the-character-sen-in-the-sky-phi-version

Background for Japan Kanji of the Year 2022: www.nippon.com/en/japan-topics/c03833/

Credit for track image inset of Seihan Mori, chief priest of Kiyomizu Temple, painting the Kanji of the Year on December 12 in Kyoto: www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2022/12/1…022-kanji-war/

Bandcamp

2022.12.03 F/A-18F Hornet. The Sound of the Brush Inking the Character 戦 in the Sky. (N version)

... That would have been unheard by human ears.

2022.12.25 Another Dawn that Would Have Been Unheard. Summer.

I sat with the forest. I sat far farther back from the overlooking edge seen in this photo. I didn't watch, I only listened.
I was deeply touched by the inexorable reality that, 'before' and 'after', which are but an imagination, nothing whatsoever had changed; nothing whatsoever COULD change. Business will grind on as usual, of course.
In the recording, if you listen from beginning to end, the sounds will tell the truth: both metaphorically, metaphysically, and quite literally.
Whatever will be 'new' - truly, existentially 'new' - must come, and can ONLY come, fundamentally, from us: our own minds, our own actions, our own ways of being.

Related yet unrelated track: https://soundcloud.com/hearingbeings/20191231-to-20200101-small-city-new-year-as-heard-from-far-away

2022.12.31 - 2023.01.01. What the Forest Heard.

Matinée enneigée. Oiseaux à la mangeoire (suspendue sur un portique de balançoire). Essentiellement des mésanges charbonnières (Parus major) et des rougegorges (Erithacus rubecula). Mais on peut aussi entendre un pic épeiche (Dendrocopos major), des corneilles (Corvus corone), un pigeon ramier (Columba palumbus) et une grive draine (Turdus viscivorus)

Snowy morning. Birds at the feeder (suspended on a swing set). Mainly great tits (Parus major) and robins (Erithacus rubecula). But we can also hear a spotted woodpecker (Dendrocopos major), crows (Corvus corone), a wood pigeon (Columba palumbus) and a wood thrush (Turdus viscivorus)

Recorded with a Tascam DR100 MK2 with a pair of Lom Uši Pro.

230129-AM-Birds at the feeder

Compiled with recordings from the Macaulay Library.

Amazing Weddell seal sounds below the Antarctic ice

🌎🌍

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