Nightmares of tawny owls

A small flock of sixty Migrating Whooper Swans in the middle of night resting on Makholma Bay, Western Finland.  The tempo of the yoking will increase to the end. The nearby shore with forest is giving a nice echo. 

Video from the Bay:  http://www.rupuranta.net/weblog/filet/211114a/

(MKH8020 ab80cm, SD702, 24/48, Flac)

Whooper Swans  - 14/11/2021 - Makholma Bay

These recordings were made with deep respect in the country of the Ngarrindjeri peoples.

With respect, with sadness, with hope. Everything here has changed; except for the sound of the ocean. Where the waters meet, is where the sounds merge. The sound of the ocean, permeating all, remains the same.

Unprocessed excerpts from original recordings. (Listening with good quality headphones - preferably open-backed - with a flat frequency response is recommended.)

An Afterword: I am deeply pleased and honoured that the original recordings from which this piece was composed have found a perfect home in Megan Spencer's important and heartfelt podcast, 'Bringing His Spirit Home: Private Arthur Thomas Walker, Ngarrindjeri ANZAC', as immersive field recordings made in, and expressing the natural spirit of, Arthur Thomas Walker's home country. This educational podcast is one of four produced by Megan, commissioned by the Virtual War Memorial Australia, and can be heard here: https://vwma.org.au/education/bringing-his-spirit-home-private-arthur-thomas-walker-ngarrindjeri-anzac.

Some of my earlier Kurangk/Coorong recordings have also been happily woven into Megan's related podcast, 'Walking in Two Worlds: The WW1 Story of Ngarrindjeri ANZACs Cryril & Rufus Rigney', which can be heard here: https://vwma.org.au/education/podcast--walking-in-two-worlds--the-ww1-story-of-ngarrindjeri-anzacs-cyril-rufus-rigney.

@Bandcamp

2022.10.09 From the Mouth of Murrundi to Goolwa Beach. Kumerangk, Kurangk. Night to Dawn. Spring.

synthesisers played by Ken Ikeda
trombone & feedback played by Edward Lucas

recording, mix & photographs by E.Lucas
mastered by Rupert Clervaux
design by Earshots

recorded in 2018 at Lock Down Studios in the lost tower hamlet of Ratcliff

EAR014 - Ken Ikeda / Edward Lucas - Lost & Found [sample]

5.El Tiempo Real De Cierre Del Párpado

Field recording based composition by Alëna Korolëva, with voice of Eki Shola.

Recorded in marble quarries near Borba, Portugal, October 2022.

Strange but true fact: mining is responsible for nearly half of the world’s economy. The history of mining around the world can be read in the open scars that have been left when the sought after resource has been extracted. In these wounds, often larger-than-life pits abandoned by humans, new forms of life have gathered. Inverted Mountains is a documentary record of one of these spaces. 

Portugal’s Borba Region is rich in marble, 400 pit mines dot the landscape, all but 50 are abandoned. In 2018 a wall of one of the biggest quarries collapsed and buried five people in a landslide.

This track offers a detailed examination of sunset at the bottom of the pit, four years after the accident. Pigeons circle in the lower levels, offering a sound of wings, while starlings and swallows gather near the mouth of the pit, 50 meters above. The natural echoing acoustics of the steep walls allow each bird cry to resonate in a living delay, as if there were thousands not hundreds of birds gathering here. At the very end, the lonely bird song is echoed by a human voice, calling out in a plaintive wordless cry, the ghost of all those whose lives were lost in this forsaken place.

Inverted Mountains

On last ices by Makholma shore with a swell from nearby open water. Four White-tailed Eagles, two Ravens and a few Crows are feasting waste fish left on the ice by a local fisherman 26/2/2023.

MKH8020 + SD702  AB 80cm, 24/48, no processing, +3dB in post.

Icy Swell - 26/2/2023 - with White-tailed Eagle and Raven

"Mesh" (2022-2023) for ensemble and live-electronics, here live-performed by the Nadar Ensemble at the Concertgebouw Brugge on 26.3.2023 (Yves Goemaere, perc & live-electronics; Dries Tack, bass clarinet and live-electronics; Thomas Moore, trombone & euphonium; Nico Couck, e-guitar+FX; Pieter Matthynssens, cello; Stefan Prins, live-electronics, Wannes Gonnissen, sound engineer).

Additional samples from Rainforests in Borneo and the Amazon recorded by David Monacchi for "Fragments of Extinction".

Commissioned by Nadar Ensemble & Concertgebouw Brugge. Supported by the Flemish Community.

----------------

Even though "Mesh" can be performed as a stand-alone composition, it was premiered as part of the evening-length project "Der Wanderer 2.0" which I developed together with the Nadar Ensemble in 2023. In the version presented in the context of this project, the audience is wearing headphones on which part of the soundtrack and amplification is played back, while other parts of the soundtrack and amplification are heard through the loud speakers on stage. This splitting allowed for an extensive manipulation of sonic depth, nearness, distance, foreground, background, blanketing and uncovering. The audience was encouraged to play with the headphones, taking them on and off freely, listening to only one ear, etc., creating their own listening experience.
Of course none of this can be replicatd on this live-recording, in which the soundtrack is rendered to stereo.

Mesh (Stefan Prins, 2022-2023)

This work is intended as a meditative companion-piece to an earlier work, https://soundcloud.com/hearingbeings/20211024-night-music-spring, and follows a similar structure. However, it was recorded in an entirely different location (thirty-six kilometres away).

In this piece, the auditory journey of approach towards the distant source has more intervals, and is more gradual, than in the earlier work. Listening to what may be heard along the way is as important as arrival. On this occasion, there is only one Eastern Banjo Frog in the midst of a plenitude of Spotted Marsh Frogs, along with some Brown Tree Frogs and Common Eastern Froglets.

Other than balancing gain levels, the sequence of recordings constituting this work (made during one night at one location) has not been filtered or processed in any way (with the exception only of the final two minutes).

Fixing the volume from the outset to a fairly low level, e.g., around 40 per cent, and certainly not more than 50 per cent, is recommended. What is distant and quiet will gradually become nearer and louder.

Recorded on the land of the Peramangk people.

The track image is a modification of an original photo of an Eastern Banjo Fog (Limnodynastes dumerlii) taken by by Fir0002/Flagstaffotos and made available under a CC BY-NC licence.

2023.12.23 Night Dreaming. One Final Banjo Frog. Early Summer.

Our initial dialog with Synthia was an adventurous creative endeavour that made us question whether machines could have a soul. This one definitely spoke her mind, and left a fascinating mark on both of us as a wondrous machine––––––woman, a marvelous piece of engineering, an entity trapped in a modular eternity.

Considering that neither of us had any previous contact with such a complex modular system such as EMS Synthi 100, we took a somewhat intuitive approach. This is a fairly raw glimpse of the first days spent in the studio.

Oh, Synthia, we only just met...

--

Happy birthday Mark!!!

--

Composing, editing, patching & live mixing: Manja Ristić
Live mixing & patching: Mark Vernon
Cover art: Manja Ristić –– segment of the sculpture by Angelina Gatalica made in memory of Serbian painter Nadežda Petrović, erected in 1989 in the Pioneer’s Park, on the occasion of the IX Summit of Non-Aligned Countries.

basne——side B

Premiered in the context of the 2nd International ilSuono Academy for Young Composers 2017, which took place in July 2017 in Città di Castello, Italy.
www.ilsuonoacademy.com

ensemble Suono Giallo
www.ensemblesuonogiallo.net
Michele Bianchini, tenor saxophone
Laura Mancini, percussion

Conducted by Angus Lee.

Program Notes:
碎瞳。L'œil brisé. Broken Eye.

https://soundcloud.com/yiqing-zhu-555632457

ZHU, Yiqing: L'Oeil Brisé - for tenor sax, perc, and elec (2017)

Ploughing aural fields in remote North.

Field recordist, bird watcher and a digitized former darkroom rat living in little Makholma village on the West Coast of Finland by the Baltic Sea - 61N 21E

These recordings are done in AB stereo with omnidirectional microphones. With this technique everything in the field will be equally meaningful, even the silence behind the microphones. That's why you should use headphones!

My recordings are merely like a process than individual tracks, and should be considered in the context of my blog-alike site:  www.baltic.fi

For better quality, the tracks are downloadable as 24 bit flac. For commercial use, please take contact.

You will find my videowork here: https://vimeo.com/holotna/videos 

And pics from the places of recordings: https://holotna.pic.fi/kuvat/


Tekijä on Makholman kalarannan liepeillä majaansa pitävä digitalisoitunut pimiörotta. Intohimona linnut, meri ja vanhat puupurret.

Whooper Swans - 14/11/2021 - Makholma Bay

Jan Eerala

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