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Field Recordings

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Zéphyr on Stranded FM 16.12.22

This first investigation into Atlantic musical currents has been crystallising for way too long. Currently being far from my roots to this body of water I relied on a live hydrophone recording to centre it on a common ocean. While field recordings are often been used to harbour a sense of calm, this at times cacophonic gurgling, reminiscent of a four stroke boat engine, honours sorrowful journeys taken between these coasts.

Thank you to Natalia Beylis for contemporary Irish label suggestions, Lourenço Trindade for Portuguese experimental folk picks, ITMA for sending me a song from their archive, Bernardo Maraldi for assisting in the live recording, and finally Milena Minta for sharing two unreleased recordings for the show.

Look into ITMA for more such recordings: https://www.itma.ie/playlists/songs-of-emigration/
Txema González de Lozoyo - somnia
Michael Frank Ó Confhaola - Róisín Dubh 
Toqtoqa Jabalia - Performers in a café in Tetuan
Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh / Garth Knox - Fluctus
Nigel Rolfe - Lake Waters of Sorrow 
Banha da Cobra - Dragos
Finbar Boyle - Barney Reilly from Ballinamore (ITMA Archive)
Jibóia - Dromos 
Thierry Robin/Érik Marchand - Ar c'hont gwilhou 
Niagara - Paulo, Apolo e Pedro
Milena Minta - Gondola variation 2 (Unreleased) 
Milena Minta - Gondola variation 1 (Unreleased) 
Azu Tiwaline - Canopée Imaginaire
Rodrigo Cuevas/Refree - Muiñeira para a filla da bruxa

https://radiorelativa.eu/episode/cois-farraige

Cois Farraige on Radio Relativa 08.11.23 (Episode 1/3)

Hydrophone recordings of the waves lapping against the coast are combined with a a recording of a rain storm. Both pieces were recorded in a small harbour in Genova back in October. A drony subrhythm, a submerging of sorts. 

I start the show with a piece by Khyam Allami, an Oud musician and researcher. He has developed two free programs; Leimma and Apotome. They together help dismantle a western bias in music software by allowing for microtonal music production. Allami also worked with Tunisian producer Deena Abdelwahed on her recent album Jbal Rrsas, one of my favourite releases this year. https://isartum.net

I leave small reminders of land yet the waves slowly engulf us. By Mermaids the coast is a distant memory. Gaivota (Seagull) a reworking of a classic Fado, calls us back. And from here on the pace of the storm picks up, follow the polyrhythms onwards. The last song, Kodé Di Dona's Fomi '47, refers to the Cape Verdean famine of 1947, and emigration to São Tomé. Here he waits starving by the harbour for a boat to take him south. 

Thank you to Amapola for assisting in the harbour recording.
Khyam Allami - Tawazon I: Balance
Lankum - Fugue III
Kristen Nogues - Enez Rouz
TJ Hull and Amanda Caretta-Hull - The Bunch of Keys 
Natalia Beylis - Mermaids
Lina_Raül Refree - Gaivota
Nuri - A5DHER 1
Ifriqiyya Electrique - Stombali - Baba ‘Alaia
A.L. Guillén / Sergio Arbizu - 问一起回来 
Kodé Di Dona - Fomi 47

https://radiorelativa.eu/episode/cois-farraige-1

Cois Farraige on Radio Relativa 10.01.24 (Episode 2/3)

Broadcasted live at Radio Tempo Não Pára (10.02.2024)

Artist: @zephyyyr

Zéphyr @ Radio TNP 10.02.2024

After a few months of considering the Atlantic from a more imaginary perspective - through coding, plotting, and advecting imaginary particles - it was time for another musical escapade into the ocean. Once again, I didn't directly record the Atlantic Ocean myself; this time, I turned to the phenomenal work of sound artist Jana Winderen, with a piece titled "Evaporation," recorded 25m into the Greenland ice-sheet. This more harmonic ode to the ocean is indeed drawn from imaginations of this cold deep salty water sinking in the North Atlantic and slowly flowing southward.

Over the winter holidays, Jakob brought back a CD from Donosti. It is from two brothers who play the txalaparta (meaning either racket or the trot of a horse), a Basque instrument. We have chatted and repeated the name "txalaparta" quite often ever since; it rings nicely to the ear, but its gentle rhythm breaking though the deep ice sounds even better. And on we go to the string chorus of Michael O'Shea, a recent discovery of mine, playing his self-made instrument 'Mo Cara,' my friend in Irish. 

During this episode I play two versions of Cantiga da Ceifa “Harvest Chant”: and I quote Lourenço Trindade who shared this with me: "Cantiga da Ceifa, an ancient rural Portuguese song, and also one of my oldest echoic memories, something very dear to me. Having roots in the countryside, this song was one of my grandma's favorites, and she sang it all the time while working her crops and flowers, specifically orchids, a ton of orchids. She liked to think they grew happier with her singing, and I believe so too." I play two versions: one by Catarina Chitas, documented by Michel Giacometti, one of the most important musical ethnographers in Portugal, and the second (more recent) version by Puçanga.

There are many songs, and thus many stories and ways of telling this body of work, neither new nor old, very much timeless. I can't describe them all. But the way I want to close this investigation into a sort of imagined vision for a shared Atlantic musical heritage is by the musician Zekkereya El-magharbel. When I listened to their album and read the accompanying description of their recent album, a lot became clear to me.

"I love listening to field recordings of folk music. Especially with older specimens, the quaint crackle of someone’s relatively recent ancestor is comforting. I love pouring over libraries of songs, dances, and rituals, each moment of time a page turn for the book in front of me. Except much of this work has been done by descendants of European settler-colonialists, and I don’t love that. Suddenly these beautiful timeless recordings stop feeling like books and more like large mantises jarred in formaldehyde. The subject-object relationship is palpable, and I can’t help but feel that if I were fortunate enough to be making music a hundred years ago in the land of my ancestry, I would have fallen to a similar fate." and they continue "It’s not truly a stretch of the imagination to selectively decide that Europe doesn’t exist, and in the case of the subject-object issue of field recordings, I find solace in changing a definition of the world in a way that doesn’t conflict with our collective understanding of geography." The full text can be found on their Bandcamp.

Jana Winderen - Evaporation
Ugarte Aniak - Seigarrena
Catarina Chitas - Cantiga da Ceifa
Anna Clock - Halver
Michael O'Shea - No Journey's End
Dhia Mejriss - Xibipiio (In and Out of Experience)
ÚATH - The Awakening Of Pan
Zekkereya El-magharbel - forest	
Lahcen Akil  ⵍⴰⵃⵙⵏ ⵄⴰⵇⵉⵍ / Louis Minus Duo - Février
Natalia Baylis & Eimear Reidy - She Came Through The Window
Puçanga - Cantiga da Ceifa
Imed Alibi & Khaled Epi - Houita

Episode 3/3

Cois Farraige on Radio Relativa 20.02.24 (Episode 3/3)

Recording of a beaver dam and the drainage to a large pond in a spruce plantation close to Remience, Belgium. Ever present sounds of airplanes overhead. 

Recorded using a Clippy EM272Z1 microphone and a Zoom F3

05042024 BeaverDam

Recording of what I believe to be a Great Spotted Woodpecker in a beech forest near Mabompré, Belgium. The forest was on a steep slope on the edge of a spruce plantation, upon leaving the plantation we followed the sounds of the woodpecker until we got close enough for a recording. You can hear a couple of other woodpeckers in the distance too! The drumming is a form of communication between birds usually done on hollow logs or dead trees. 

Recorded using a Clippy EM272Z1 microphone and a Zoom F3
Image (of a different Woodpecker) by Gerry Zambonini

06042024 GreatSpottedWoodpeckerDrumming

A collaborative audiovisual performance (visuals Zohra Mrad / audio Zéphyr) brought together by Utrecht's @zen1111th collective. The recording contains fragments of tape-loops foreshadowing the next meander, and noisy forest recordings stitching it all together. 

Cover image is a still from Zohra Mrad's live visual piece.

edós

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