Black-fronted titi call in Atlantic forest 

Recorded at 6:40am in Serrinha do Alambari, State of Sao Paulo, Brazil
With ORTF Schoeps microphones in Sound devices Mixpre-6 24 bits 96kHz

Thanks to Felix Blume & Gregoire Chauvot for their gear.

Callicebus Nigrifrons Call

Dropped two contact mics at the surface of an anthill

Recorded with JrF contact mics in Serrinha do Alambari, State of Sao Paulo, Brazil in Sound devices Mixpre-6 96kHz 24 bits

Ants swarming

4.33 Gales Rains Windowpanes

April 16th 2022. 67th(R) Subway, Queens. 7:47 PM

recording0170

Eavesdropping on a conversation amongst bullfrogs along Clear Creek in Coralville, Iowa. Recorded with a matched stereo pair of Rode NT5 mics paired in ORTF configuration.

Bullfrogs along Clear Creek, Coralville, Iowa

“soft gradient” is dedicated to Annea Lockwood in gratitude for her friendship and her music. Annea’s gift of a kempul gong recurs quietly in this piece.

Best heard on headphones, soft gradient reflects on the concept of the petit Bardo through multiple, often parallel presences - first through human movement in the soundscape and then by overlapping vestibules of abstract and concrete sound. What might be described as liminal polyphony is demarcated (or decentered) through passageways that are short (such vintage light switches and their tinkling bulbs recorded in France) or ever-elongating inharmonic clouds.

Begun in 2023 and completed in 2024, soft gradient also marks a personal rebirth—an ongoing passage to good health after COVID-19. Based on responses I continue to receive after this music was released in July 2024, soft gradient also offers a pathway for rest and rejuvenation, which is essential to survive and transform our troubling times.

soft gradient

Support this music

soft gradient (complete)

Your Felt Path by Olafur Eliasson at Sesc Pompeia

Stereo mix of eight-channel, electroacoustic music

Breath and the Machine

This is a stereo mixdown of my six-channel sound installation made from material I collected during the Sonic Mmabolela residency, November 2018, in Limpopo Province, South Africa. Birds, frogs, snails, people and, especially, cicadas are heard in this soundscape composition.

This recording was made using various input methods simultaneously (hydrophones, a contact mic, audio mics with and without physical filtering). There is a small amount of editing, but the temporal relationship among the channels (which I think of as voices) is maintained throughout.

The Limpopo River forms the majority of the northern border of South Africa. The pool in the picture above is a small eddy off to the southern side of the river, and the site of this recording. The shot was taken from a concrete bridge which carries a small road northward, across the Limpopo to Botswana.

Many thanks to Francisco López, Barbara Ellison and all of my Sonic Mmabolela compatriots for their guidance and companionship on this fantastic trip. Thanks also to Nyeema Morgan for her thoughts on 'implication'.

field: alarum, implication (v2.1)

g-maze

Each year, at the Hiroshima Peace Park, a pagoda peace bell is rung on August 6th at 8:15 a.m. I witnessed that ringing last in 2005. Some forty thousand people gathered at the park early that morning for the yearly ritual. And when the assembly was hushed for the ringing of the bell, I was overwhelmed not by our collective silence, but rather by the density of sound surrounding us. Cicadas. I experienced an instant ear flash, to say: that sixty years earlier, at the detonation 1900 feet above the city, cicadas were the last sound heard by the forty-five thousand people who perished instantly into the hottest heat, the brightest light, and the loudest sound in world history. That’s what was on my mind when I recorded the bell, and later the sounds of cicadas, to mix together. To create a historical patina, I played the sound back through two 1940s radio sets, from Hiroshima and Nagasaki and re-recorded it the way it might have sounded if broadcast on that day. This composition was commissioned by the International Community Foundation and is dedicated to all who suffered from the nuclear atrocity.

The recording is available on CD:  https://voxlox.myshopify.com/products/steven-feld-the-time-of-bells-4

07 Hiroshima  The Last Sound

My sound work encompasses field recordings, electroacoustic and acousmatic music, text-sound scores, free-improvised low-tech electronics, and compositions for acoustic instruments. 

soft gradient (complete)

Christopher DeLaurenti

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