What do you hear from your window

Expansive, immersive, epic dark ambient drone journey (with occasional hints of relevant noise, experiments and twists as always, hopefully at all the right moments for those now listening).

Exploring the themes of 'Mother Nature' as a living breathing entity, the intriguing forests of the world, and how we should make more of an effort, small and daily, large and for our lifetimes, to take care of the very things that give us our existence.

Made between December 16th and May 3rd 2022, using piano, voice, bass, drums, several field recordings in Orlová Cz, no 'Paulstretch' and lots of manipulations and layering.

I hope you will step away from reality for an hour and let my sounds and nature guide your brain and feelings. I promise it is a warming, fulfilling trip once you are inside.

Album free to download: https://theowl.bandcamp.com/album/76-the-forests

'Rekindle' from OWL076 The Forests

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

AliceisPermafrost & Senglar - Mediterraneo Ciclos

May song (2022)
six voices and prerecorded audio
Performed by Exaudi, at Exposure 2023, Milton Court, 22 May 23

Cressida Sharp, sop.
Jessica Gillingwater, mez-sop.
Tom Williams, counterten.
David de Winter, ten.
Michael Hickman, bari.
Simon Whiteley, bass

James Weeks, cond.

Text by Goethe (1771), trans. Lisa Jeschke & Lucy Beynon (in Jeschke, Anthology of Poems by Drunk Women, Materials, 2018 http://material-s.blogspot.com/2020/10/lisa-jeschke-anthology-of-poems-by.html.)

How beautiful shines 
To me, the nature! 
How the sun glows! 
How the mead smiles!

Blossoms penetrate 
From each branch 
And a thousand voices 
Out of the shrubbery

And joy, and joy 
From each breast. 
O earth, o sun,
O joy o lust!

O love, o love!
As golden, as beautiful 
As the morning clouds 
On those heights

You bless gloriously 
The fresh field
The blossoms’ steam 
The bountiful world.

O girl, girl
How I love you! 
Your eyes gaze! 
How you love me!

This is the way the lark loves 
Song and air
And morning flowers
The smell of heaven

How much I love you, 
My blood warmed
By you, for me, a youth, 
And joy and courage

For new songs
And dances
May you be happy eternally 
As long as you love me.

Prerecorded sounds include two field recordings of a wind turbine in Bernau bei Berlin, recorded by Peter Cusack, 2021.

Art: Unknown photographer, WT-Energiesystems Albertshof wind turbines, Bernau bei Berlin, c. 2020

Thanks to James Weeks and Exaudi, and to Paolo Carlotto and Nick Moroz for audio engineering assistance.

May song

I
II 
III 
Estonian bagpipes: Katariin Raska, Ulvi Võsa, Karolin Vetevoog, Kaisa Kuslapuu, Mari Meentalo, Kerli Kislõi
Premiere recorded by Estonian Classic Radio, 01.05.2023
Be it lines of force or a forgotten contact between the earth and our bodies, the essential point of support.. Earth veins as vital paths with oscillating and resonant intersections? 
Following the events of last February in Southern Turkey and  Western Syria, the earth once again showed also its destructive power, the effects of which are also echoed in this work.
a review by Simon Cummings: https://5against4.com/2023/05/30/estonian-music-days-2023-part-3/

Earth Veins for 6 estonian bagpipes (2023)

SenSen - Cera

performed by:

Elijah Spies – viola
Francesco Palmieri – guitar
Jacob Mason – piano
Mikołaj Rytowski – percussion

recorded by Santiago Villar Martín
mixed by Isaac Roth Blumfield

recorded Nov 30, Klaus Linder Saal, Musik Akademie Basel

Underglow | for viola, guitar, piano, percussion, feedback network, and electronics (2022-23)

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.

@Bandcamp

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

An improvised field recording set on aquatic life and death in the age of the Anthropocene. It combines underwater recordings of singing glaciers, pulsating aquatic plants and water insects with spatial resonances from hydropower dams and reservoirs.

Live on the river Bille, Floating Transmission, Hamburg 2023
Festival curated by Julia Nordholz
Photo by Antje Sauer

Troubled Waters (Field Recording Live Set @ Floating Transmissions 2023)

I've already posted a downloadable excerpt from this recording, which is of the only performance so far of this piece (in February 2005, by the BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Tadaaki Otaka). Here it is in its entirety. I hope I won't get into trouble for posting it but how else is anyone going to hear this music? which was presumably the idea behind commissioning and performing it...

NO (2004) for orchestra

This recording is part of "What do you hear from your window?" Initiated by Gilles Malatray - a form of Sound Walking without leaving your house during the outbreak of Covid19. Link further down
Recorded in my garden on Tuesday 4:14:2020 11.00AM - the weather was cold and clear with a little wind. 
I went out to get something in my workshop/shed and heard the sound of a large flock of starlings hanging out in the large spruce in the picture. I've heard a few times before but never had the chance to record them.... there's a few other nice sounds - from other birds as well as people... enjoy
EDIT my neighbour heard the birds as well, and he said they were fieldfares...
Recorded with a pair of LOM Audio Usi's in AB 40 and Sound Devices MixPre3 II 32 Bit float. 
Enjoy
desartsonnantsbis.com/2020/03/17/app…SriHXUNGpxBIBw

Lewitt 540S

Tuesday 4:14:2020 11.00AM

This recording is part of "What do you hear from your window?" Initiated by Gilles Malatray - a form of Sound Walking without leaving your house during the outbreak of Covid19. Link further down
Recorded in my garden on Saturday 4:18:2020 1.00PM - the weather was really nice and clear with a little wind. 
I my garden I have a patio with two peartrees growing up agains a wall. The trees are flowering right now, and bees come to visit... I love bees and the sound they make, so I set up my gear to record and went about to do other stuff... You hear me setting up the recorder and walking away, shutting my sliding door and then the sounds of the bees, birds my neighbors, people talking on the dirt road behind my house... sounds pretty normal for a Saturday - maybe a little less traffic, and definitely no airplanes. The track is quite long and unprocessed except for gain setting/normalizing 
Recorded with a pair of LOM Audio Usi's in AB 40 and Sound Devices MixPre3 II 32 Bit float. 
Enjoy
desartsonnantsbis.com/2020/03/17/app…SriHXUNGpxBIBw

Saturday 4:18:2020 1PM

This recording is part of "What do you hear from your window?" Initiated by Gilles Malatray - a form of Sound Walking without leaving your house during the outbreak of Covid19. Link further down
Recorded in my garden on Monday 4:27:2020 8.00PM - the weather was calm and grey with very little wind. 
Right outside my garde hedge there’s a dirt road - used by the townspeople jogging, walking their dogs and riding horses from the farm close to my house. Tonight I noticed a pair of horses walking on the far end of the dirt road, so I went to set up my microphones to catch them as they walked back to the farm - it took a little longer than I anticipated - but I recorded a lot of other wonderful sounds. The recording starts with the first jet I’ve noticed in a long time… There’s a rumble from the farmers tractor, my neighbors furnace, birds singing and my pigeon pair flying about, a person walking briskly in the gravel  and the kids down the block playing a form of street tennis with their dad having fun - towards the end you hear the woman with the horses returning while they talk… a bee flying close to the mics and a dog barking from a distance and finally me walking back to stop the recording.
The track is unprocessed except for gain setting/normalizing 
Recorded with a pair of Lewitt LCT 540 S in NOS and Sound Devices MixPre3 II 32 Bit float. 
Enjoy
desartsonnantsbis.com/2020/03/17/app…SriHXUNGpxBIBw

Monday 4:27:2020 8PM

This recording is part of "What do you hear from your window?" Initiated by Gilles Malatray - a form of Sound Walking without leaving your house during the outbreak of Covid19. Link further down
Recorded in my garden on Friday 5:1:2020 8.00PM - the weather was rainy with very little wind. 
It's been raining on and off all day and I have been trying to get a good recording since this morning. I finally decided to go to the front of my house to set up the mics under a large bush. I wanted to avoid to many drops hitting the mics. That turned out to be a pretty good plan as I mannaged to record the sound of the rain as well as the birds and even a couple of bees taking shelter from the rain. You can hear sounds coming from my house as well as from my neighbors.
The track is unprocessed except for gain setting/normalizing 
Recorded with a pair of LOM Usi's AB 40 into a Sony PCM D 100
Enjoy
desartsonnantsbis.com/2020/03/17/app…SriHXUNGpxBIBw

Friday 5:1:2020 8PM

This recording is part of "What do you hear from your window?" Initiated by Gilles Malatray - a form of Sound Walking without leaving your house during the outbreak of Covid19. Link further down
Recorded in my front garden on Wednesday 5:6:2020 12 noon - the weather was sunny and pretty windy 
Every year on the first Wednesday of May, exactly at noon, the air raid sirens are tested all over Denmark. They blow them three times 4 minutes apart - the first two signals tell you to go inside and turn on the news, the final one is the “all clear” signal… When I was growing up they tested them every Wednesday - I guess the world is safer now?
I reduced the low end a bit to get rid of some of the wind…other than that, the track is unprocessed except for gain setting/normalizing 
Recorded with a pair of Lewitt LCT 540 S in NOS and Sound Devices MixPre3 II 32 Bit float. 
Enjoy
desartsonnantsbis.com/2020/03/17/app…SriHXUNGpxBIBw

Wednesday 5:6:2020  At Noon

Working in mixed media...fieldrecordings, analog soundgenerators homemade "tossekasser" creating soundscapes, a,bi & non tonal pieces with or without instruments. Graduated with a degree in (electric) guitar from the Carl Nielsen Institute in Odense, Denmark in 2000.
Masters degree in Electronic Music Composition from DIEM, Aarhus Denmark
Work among others with Acustic Laptoist Tore Honore Boe - saxophonist Peter Brem, soprano Ge-Suk Yeo, poet Richard J. Rizzi, Thomas Jakobsen, drums






Monday 4:27:2020 8PM

rizzi

Related tracks