I woke up this mornin
Took a look in the mirror
Saw somethin starin back at me
I was frozen with fear
Put a hand to my face
When what to my surprise
Five claws scratchin mandibles
And a pair a compound eyes
And I said ah christ
Gotta seek some advice

Went and asked my ol lady
Oh how can this be
She said man you got some nerve right here
To come cryin to me so why don’t you just
Put on your coat and hat right now
And crawl yourself out the door
These gears ain’t gonna grease themselves
And you don’t wanna be poor
So get off the floor

Oh what can I do

You sleep with the rest of the vermin
Vermin

Before you had changed
You knew every boss was a bastard
Bastard

Have you given up
Or did you not know that cockroaches fly
So fuck it

Doombrass

The Gregor Samsa Blues (Pandemo Version)

The European fire-bellied toad is, in fact, a frog. (No fire, either.) However, this is more than compensated by its satisfyingly fun-to-say Latin name: Bombina bombina. They also produce antimicrobial peptides in their skin secretions – the even more fun-to-say ‘bombinins’. 

Native to eastern mainland Europe – recorded here in the protected land of Poland’s Barycz Valley Landscape Park – they use their internal vocal sacs to produce their “whoop” call: the mournful, slow-motion honk immortalized here. Imagine the sound that clowns might make when they cry and you won’t be far off.

Bombina bombina mysterious call

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.

Catching deer on field at all night recording. Eating, rubbing horns in tree....that was almost all night  happening.
Location : Slovenia primal forest

Longer recording available here:
 https://earth.fm/recordings/red-deer-on-the-field/?fbclid=IwAR1BJVMQonsDeTefUmqLjIQz5zXgKHng7qXlRFq8hGe74RDVSIFumX6VAac

deer at night rubbing its horns on open field- primal forest Slovenia

Take a listen to a 4 minute overnight journey through an Australian forest. This short compilation was taken during a long 18 hour recording session deep in the Australian forest. It starts at about 4pm, and finishes about 10am the next day. The recording starts with bees nearby in the undergrowth, followed by bird life as the light fades into night. The tropical rain starts about 1130pm and continues all night, creating a magical dance on the leaves and stones covering the ground.

The laughing Kookaburra wakes first and announces the first glimmer of light on the horizon just as the rain starts to fade away, followed by many more birds calling and chatting to their mates. 

The bees finally wake up and end the recording very busy... just like they did the previous day. The circle of life in about 4 minutes. Enjoy the immensely gorgeous cacophony of the Australian forest.

Captured on a Zoom F3, with Em272 Clip mics.

Australian Forest Life

30 May 2023

To get good recordings of birds you have to come close. On way of achieving this is to work with concealed microphones. It’s not easy to predict where the target bird/s will be, and I regularly fail in my attempts, but occasionally I succeed. I scouted a semi-open sandy area – a former tree seed orchard –  where I had encountered lekking Black Grouse last year, and hid a small stereo lavalier microphone overnight in the crown of an isolated small pine tree. One by one the Black Grouse males arrived in the late evening hours and immediately began displaying around the small pine tree.  

Umeå commune, Västerbotten County (63.39 N, 19.54 E)

Primo-EM172s

01_01.05

In the middle of the Black Grouse lekk

Atacama Desert is a collection of stereo and quad soundscapes recorded in the barren but amazingly beautiful desert plateau of Western Chile. Get it at https://mindful-audio.com/atacama-desert

MAFX027 Atacama Desert Demo

minimalism on my (main) instrument lately. a few recordings directly into TE's TX-6

8 oscillators(disquiet0599)

A few weeks ago Lucia and I made our first trip since having our baby. We made the trip in preparation for another trip to figure out how to travel. The trip needed to be multi-day and high in elevation to help baby be better prepared for his first airplane trip. We decided on Yosemite Valley. With a newborn hardly two months old would we be able to explore or create like we normally would? It was a different pace than our typical trips to be sure, but still awesome!

Something we don't often experience where we live is thunderstorms and finally for the first time I had an opportunity to record one! I used my SASS/Olson-ish microphone which uses four EM272 capsules. The EM272 doesn't have the largest SPL handling so I wasn't sure if the thunder would overload them or not. I was pleasantly surprised that in combination with the MixPre 3II 32-bit recording none of the thunder clipped! I put the microphone under a fallen tree in hopes the rain wouldn't hit it.

Processing this recording was a challenge. Thunder is LOUD. Many of the strikes were 40-60dB louder than the rest of the environment! Since I like to listen to my recordings while working I wanted to process the recording so I wouldn't need to change the volume constantly for fear of bleeding ears. I used a variety of techniques from removing the thunder with splicing and then overlaying the thunder with reduced volume. When the rain (and hail) was more intense I found this didn't work well so I instead relied on more targeted spectral editing. For both techniques I utilized iZotope's Ozone Maximizer to help keep the impact of the thunder while still reducing the volume to a listenable range.

I have a sneaking suspicion that I'll try reprocessing this at some point, but for now I'm proud of my first attempt. Hope you enjoy!

Some technical details about the recording:
- Recording Date: 2023.06.10
- Location: Foresta, CA (in Yosemite Valley)
- Audio Interface: Sound Devices MixPre3-II
- Rate, Depth: 96kHz, 32-bit float
- Gain: 65bB
- Microphone: Stereo "SASS" Dual EM272 per Channel

Afternoon Thunderstorm across Yosemite Valley

Grand Corbeau Dans un chêne à Ifrane au Maroc, le 20230331 vers 06h00 du matin. Séquence avec au début des cris de renard puis dialogue entre deux grands corbeaux. Sons d'envol et de vol du grand corbeau au cours de la séquence. 
avec MKH8020 et zoom f3.
photo cc-by-sa 3 R. Altenkamp

Grand corbeau avec sons d'envol et de vol

Recorded on four channels nearby laggon under  Svínafellsjökull glacier south of Vatnajökull glacier in Iceland.
Two microphones are recording the soundscape above the  glacier lagoon and two hydrophones are placed in the lagoon.
More information will be found at http://fieldrecording.net


Above the glacier lagoon (Sennheiser MKH20 in AB40)

Newbie recording the natural world on my travels with my Zoom Hn1, F3 and F6.

Australian Forest Life

Legio Sounds

Related tracks