Floating

Philoria loveridgei: phour (4) minutes of phrog phlatulence.
A cool temperate antarctic beech forest soak is the venue for this burrow dwelling (thus the variation in pitch), daytime performing endangered frog species.  It could be a junior boys school dormitory but the birds in the background give it away.

Flatulent Frog Quartet:

A midsummer thunderstorm approaches during the dusk chorus which has transitioned from birdsong to insects, with the pulsating rhythmic cicada song. Heavy rain was to follow and the Nightcap National Park subtropical rainforest became alive with many frog species, including the Mixophyes fasciolatus pictured eating a large spider.

Insect chorus and evening storm: Rocky Creek

The first form of communication was not language but vibration. Listen to an audio essay featuring the biologist Juan José López and sound artist Ludwig Berger who sonify species that soon threatens to become completely extinct - if we don't listen. 

This audio essay podcast was created by the musician, writer, and Norient editor Philipp Rhensius aka Alienationist @k-lone in autumn 2023 at Klang Moor Schopfe 2023. It is part of the Online Special «Sonic Natureculture»: each piece features conversations with (and sometimes sounds by) the artists and their installations, occasionally merging with Rhensius’ own compositions and poetry.

https://norient.com/sonic-natureculture

A Huge Reservoir of Life ‒ Audio Essay on Insects

Randomly generated tone cluster in the Buchla 200 system.

Random Clusters

LUDWIG BERGER - SPECIES LONELINESS
Cat #: OUS051
Release date: March 29, 2024
Distributed by Kudos: https://kudosdistribution.co.uk
Label Bandcamp: https://ousooo.bandcamp.com

«I wanted to revisit the sound worlds of 1970s eco-horror films, a time of growing fears about environmental consequences. Today, we no longer fear the revenge of frogs or insects; we are mourning their vanishing. My music channels the eerie, anticipatory dread of those films into a contemporary lament for what’s been lost and a search for what might still be restored.» — @ludwigberger

Leading up to his first ‘fictional’ album «Garden of Ediacara», which will be released on May 3rd via -OUS,  landscape sound artist Ludwig Berger presents the EP «Species Loneliness».

Building on an extensive and acclaimed body of work in sound art, field recordings, installation and performance, as well as music for film and theatre, the EP «Species Loneliness» and the subsequent  album «Garden of Ediacara» mark a shift in Berger’s creative work. But as he enters the realm of ‘fictional’ music by engaging with environmental emotions, he still relies on his far-reaching practice as a close listener and archivist of unheard sounds.

With «Species Loneliness», Berger explores a yearning for interspecies connection on a damaged planet. The six track EP presents a set of muted songs that are haunted by echoes of eco-horror and eco-gothic films of the past century, while interwoven raw field recordings create the space to breathe. The tracks center around the term of «Species Loneliness» — an ecological form of isolation and solitude. It expresses the feeling of homesickness while being at home, arising from the loss of natural habitats and the decline of biodiversity. Through layers of degraded samples, eco-nostalgia runs through the EP, longing for meaningful relationships obscured in the shadows of the Anthropocene.

Ludwig Berger is a landscape sound artist, educator and musician. In his compositions, installations and performances, he enables intimate and playful sonic encounters with plants, animals, buildings and geological entities. In his musical work, Berger produces sonic eco-fictions with processed and synthetic sounds.  He has composed sound and music for award-winning films and theatre pieces and curated the landscape sound festival ‘Sonic Topologies’ in Zurich. He is also founder and curator of the label Vertical Music, which releases field recordings and experimental music. 

Berger holds degrees in electroacoustic composition, as well as musicology, art history and literature. As a sound researcher and teacher at the Institute for Landscape Architecture at ETH Zurich from 2015-2022, he studied the sonic dimension of Japanese gardens, alpine glaciers and urban landscapes, which among other things led to the release of the acclaimed album trilogy ‘Melting Landscapes’, ‘Dammed Landscapes’ and ‘Buried Landscapes’.

CREDITS
Written and produced by Ludwig Berger 
Mastered by Giuseppe Ielasi
Album cover by Paulin Rogues

Species Loneliness

Cocoon Death

Buy on Bandcamp

Ludwig Berger - Species Loneliness - 5 - Cocoon Death

birds, crickets, and black squirrels chirp
amongst the trees shaped as legs and torsos 
twined amongst the rocks
sheep bleat and low in the valley
chainsaws echo on the mountainsides
as the evening falls in autumn
the shepherds beat their sticks and call their flocks
below the cursed spring where 
they used to say, no unwed girl should pass

Dusk Falling By The Edge Of The Forest

In the stillness of a Swedish forest, a solitary Mistle Thrush sings its melancholic tune. This recording captures the essence of the forest, a place where time seems to stand still and the beauty of nature can be fully appreciated.

Recorded 14.04.2023
Zoom F3 + Sennheiser MKH8020

Image courtesy of Birds of Gilgit-Baltistan (Creative Commons)

Mistle Thrush - Öjesjöbrännan Ekopark, Västerfärnebo, Sweden

Chorus of endemic treefrogs of Taiwan :
莫氏樹蛙 Rhacophorus moltrechti Boulenger, 1908.
台北樹蛙 Rhacophorus taipeianus Liang & Wang, 1978.

Recorded near Jiaping Camp, Yilan County, Taiwan.
13.04.2024 20:40
Sony PCM-D100 + Primo EM272

240413 treefrog chorus, Jiaping, Yilan, Taiwan

Recorded at the Moss Cathedral, Hoh Rainforest, Olympic Peninsula National Park, Washington State, USA. Bird species include Pacific Wren, Stellar's Jay and a Varied Thrush. Recorded with a stereo pair of clippy EM172 microphones and an Olympus LS-10 recorder.

Moss Cathedral

Fire-bellied toad (Bombina bombina) Lobau 20.2

sound | ecology | ornithology | herpetology 

here, you find a selection of recordings from my archive. if you want to use one of my recordings for your project, please get in touch.

thank you for listening!

peace!

Fire-bellied toad (Bombina bombina) Lobau 20.2

Hendrik Walcher

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