2024.01.01 New Year Fireworks

Geophones, hydrophones, contact mic and 6 omnidirectional microphones

Notes
As the light diminished, the volcanic palette undergoes a kaleidoscopic transformation, revealing an iridescence a spectral shimmering.

The sands embody the ethereal interplay of otherworldly pigments that defy earthly conventions.
Listening with multispecies ecologies: volcanic rock pools teeming with life , hermit crabs, Black Sea urchin, Goby and Shrimp, with tides crashing nearby. Human perception and language too limited to describe these multiplicitous worlds.

Using  geophones to  convert ground movement (velocity) into voltage, in attempt to pick up subterranean vibrations. The deviation of this measured voltage from the base line is called the seismic response and is analysed for structure of the earth.
In this majestic Canary Islands. We discovered alien, enigmatic volcanic landscapes, lava fields and magical caves and art by Cesar Manrique. An island carved and shaped with creativity and art.

Speculative Field Trip: Timanfaya National Park in Lanzarote

I wanted to find a small, ultralight, but well-built tripod that could support a lightweight microphone rig and could efficiently be stowed inside a backpack with camping and recording gear. I decided on the Vanguard VEO 3 GO 204CB (carbon fibre) tripod. It folds down to 34.5 cm and weighs only 0.81 kg, but it can support a load up to 3 kg. It is well-designed and well-made. I was very happy with the purchase, and looked forward to using it in the field on my first test trip (on Kangaroo Island). I didn't know, until I received the package, that although Vanguard is a US-based company, the tripod was manufactured in Myanmar.

On the morning after an overnight recording (04.12.24) at Snake Lagoon, Flinders Chase National Park - not the first overnight recording I had made - I immediately noticed that the rubber handgrip on one of the legs had been mauled and damaged, but was still attached to the tripod. Listening back to the recording, I was able to hear the culprit in action at 11:49 pm.

After another overnight recording in Cape Bouguer Wilderness Protection Area, in the morning (10.12.24) I found the handgrip so badly mauled and shredded that it basically came off in my hand when I touched it. I noticed that two of the rubber leg-extender tightening rings had also been partly chewed, but they were still intact. The recording revealed three separate attacks during the night: the first at 11:36 pm, the second at 12:04 am, and the third (the longest and most severe of all four attacks) at 12:58 am. Listening to the recordings, my attention was drawn to the sound of sniffing: it seemed that the creature, whatever it was, must have been attracted to the smell of the rubber handgrip and tightening ring grips - but, despite all of that mauling and chewing, it very evidently had not actually eaten any of the rubber! It had merely shredded it. Presumably, the rubber didn't taste as good as it smelled.

When I got back home, a little research disclosed that Myanmar has become one of the largest natural (plant-derived) rubber producers in the world. At first glance, it might seem that natural rubber must be more 'eco-friendly' than (petroleum-derived) synthetic rubber - especially in an industrial carbon-driven climate change context; an assumption feeding rapid growth in natural rubber production. But on closer inspection, it's not that simple. The growing natural rubber industry is a well-known cause of deforestation, biodiversity loss, pollution, and various socio-economic and political issues.

The assumption that natural rubber is the 'clean' answer to synthetic rubber is, essentially, as it stands, false. It falls into the same category as the (equally false) assumption that electric vehicles are the 'clean' answer to petrol-driven vehicles. For example, the ever-increasing insatiable drive for critical minerals required for electric batteries for such vehicles is threatening and already harming more and more formerly protected or untouched natural environments, and the species and cultures that depend on them. Laws are being 'reformed' to make access to such environments easier for the industries that crave to exploit them, ostensibly in the name of saving us from 'climate change'.

It seems paradoxical to argue that the need to tame 'climate change' should give us licence to further destroy nature. What are we really trying to protect, here? Obviously, not nature. And, arguably, not exactly humanity, as such, either. Rather, it seems more plausible (if not obvious) that the main concern is to protect a familiar political economy that is predicated on constant growth. The economy that destroyed half of nature getting itself to its present global status has now been granted the perfect excuse to destroy the other half of nature to keep itself alive and growing.

The animal attracted to the natural rubber on my tripod brought to my attention yet another aspect of a familiar (global) dilemma, and a new (local) dilemma.

2024.12.04 & 10 Natural Rubber: A Double Dilemma.

2 penny coin pusher in the pier amusement arcade at an English seaside town.

Original Sound Recorded in 24bit 96khz

Photo: C Perkins

Full sets: aerobluesounds.bandcamp.com/

HD audio available to download

Original location recordings from the world of ambient recording.
High quality recordings with minimal background distractions.

2 Penny Coin Pusher in the Pier Arcade

Recorded using a SASS - made by Marco pesente and zoom F3.

Wolf Chorus

Small lake near town and some grey herons on a tree - distant traffic and other urban sounds can be heard.
Most clips are raw files without EQ (in first i use it to remove aeroplane hum).

Sennheiser MKH40 and ZoomF6



Grey Herons near frozen lake

Jedes Jahr überwintern hunderte von Pfeifenten im Westoverledinger Hammrich. Nachts schlafen die auf dem Wallschloot ....naja schlafen kann man das nicht nennen. 

Tascam DR05X, Primo EM272, AB60cm, 48/24 wav converted to 48/16 FLAC, no editing in post.

Für die beste Qualität nutzen Sie bitte einen Kopfhörer. Viel Spass!!

Pfeifenten - 2025/03/06 - Wallschloot

Wolf Pack Passing (with vocalisations) 06/03/2025

Wolf Howling 06/03/2025

The focal point in these elided consecutive excerpts from a continuous dawn recording is the dawn duet and solo singing of the Kangaroo Island subspecies (lashmari) of the Western Whipbird (Psophodes nigrogularis), also known as the White-bellied Whipbird (Psophodes leucogaster).** Background species include: Crescent Honeyeater, Galah, Grey Shrike-thrush, Kangaroo Island subspecies (KI) Crimson Rosella, KI Grey Currawong, KI Superb Fairy-wren, among others. The recording was made near the edge of a waterfall that was completely dry, overlooking a deep valley winding down to the ocean just over a kilometre away.

When listening to this recording (and viewing the accompanying track photograph taken at the location), it is important to embrace in mind that one is listening to an ecosystem soundscape recorded at dawn only five years after untypically catastrophic bushfires (the 'Black Summer' bushfires of 2019-2020) - an untypicality that is scientifically attributable to anthropically-caused climate change. This an ecosystem still in early stages of a struggling recovery (exacerbated by the continuation of the drought that initially catalysed the 'Black Summer' bushfires), and the focal birds that one is listening to were listed, in 2021, according to the IUCN Red List classification, as 'Endangered'. The following is a quotation from the Australian government environmental report that advised this classification:

"The main factor that made the subspecies eligible for listing in the Endangered category was the severe (>50%) reduction in population size in the previous 10 years. This major reduction in population was caused by the largest recorded wildfire on Kangaroo Island that burned for six weeks from late December 2019 to early February 2020. The subspecies’ extent of occurrence is estimated at 5,300 km2 (stable trend), and the area of occupancy is estimated to be 540 km2 (contracted). The population is estimated to have declined to 1,000 mature individuals in the wild due to the Kangaroo Island 2019/2020 bushfires, however this decline is probably not continuing. An analysis by a team from the National Environmental Science Program Threatened Species Recovery Hub shows that a large proportion of the range of Kangaroo Island Western Whipbird was affected by these fires: 51% was burnt in high to very high severity fire, and a further 11% was burnt in low to moderate severity fire. A structured expert elicitation process was used to estimate the proportional population change for this species from pre-fire levels to immediately after the fire and then out to three generations/10 years after the fire, when exposed to fires of varying severity. These results, combined with the spatial analyses of fire overlap, suggest that one year after the fire, the species has experienced an overall decline of 44% from pre-fire levels, but that the decline could be as large as 62% (bound of 80% confidence limits). After 10 years, the estimate for the overall population decline relative to the pre-fire population is predicted to be 33%, but potentially as much as 58% (bound of 80% confidence limit). For comparison, experts also estimated the population change over time in the absence of fire; by 10 years, the overall population of Kangaroo Island Western Whipbird after the fire was estimated to be 30% lower than it would have been, had the 2019/2020 fire not occurred."

Reference: https://www.environment.gov.au/biodiversity/threatened/species/pubs/81024-conservation-advice-14122021.pdf

**A note of thanks to the amazing Marc Anderson for identifying a clip from this bird's song on xeno-canto.

2025.04.08 White-bellied Whipbird. Dawn Songs. Kangaroo Island. Autumn.

In this totally unedited and unprocessed clip, you will hear a tightly-packed series of different kinds of vehicles, terrestrial and aerial, passing through the space (through, around, and above the Adelaide Parklands Interstate Railway Terminal) in a fairly short period of time (four minutes and fourteen seconds). In essence, it was a real blessing that they all passed by in this brief interval, rather than during the subsequent interval when I was recording the Indian Pacific. Just one of the big problems about recording the Indian Pacific within the inner city environment of the interstate terminal is the interfering background noise from other vehicles: cars (including ambulances and police cars with sirens blaring), motorbikes, trucks, trains (diesel and electric), helicopters, light planes, and jets (taking off from or landing at the nearby airport). This particular night's recording of the Indian Pacific was really very special: no wind (hence minimal windshielding - check out the track photos for the Indian Pacific recordings), and ALMOST no background noise while the Indian Pacific was passing the microphones. This is truly akin to winning a million dollar lottery! Although one doesn't end up with a million dollars, one does obtain a very satisfying recording - even it if may not be quite 'perfect' according to one's own inner intended ideal.

Although what is heard in this present recording - a concise panoply of urban vehicle noise - is not quite the kind of soundscape I would normally seek out to record, given the context of a recent series of experiments with the Lewitt 640 TSs in a mid-side arrangement, this particular passage of (sound) events caught my attention. There's something about it that I find at once somehow 'natural' (in terms of the technical representation of the sounds, soundscape, sound space, overall), and yet also somehow quite aesthetically intriguing. I was testing the omni polar pattern for the mid mic, and listening very carefully, because a lot of my recording is done with omni mics in AB array, usually with a fairly wide spacing. So, I was particularly curious to compare the soundfield of the omni AB array to that of a mid-side array with an omni mid mic. (I have some more things to say about omni AB compared to omni mid mic in mid-side in the notes to another recording, to be posted later.)

This track is the original clip, with no editing and no processing, other than resampling 96/32 wav to 96/24 flac, and normalising to 0 dB. Normalisation was needed because of some intense low frequencies while a freight train was passing at some distance behind the rig. I was surprised at how sensitive the 640 TSs were to these low frequencies, something that I'm familiar with when using the small-diaphragm omni MKH 8020s; but I guess it makes good sense, for a large diaphragm condenser microphone in omni mode.

The title 'The Full Catastrophe' is just a very oblique and playful allusion to a line spoken by Anthony Quinn, playing the role of Zorba in the movie 'Zorba the Greek', in Michael Cacoyannis's somewhat filtered and watered-down adaptation of Nikos Kazantzakis's great novel, 'The Life and Times of Alexis Zorba (Βίος και Πολιτεία του Αλέξη Ζορμπά)'.

2025.05.15 Omni Mid. "The Full Catastrophe". Parklands Interstate Terminal.

Audio Field Recordist and Photographer based in the South of England.

Original location recordings from the world of aviation, motor racing, nature, ambient life and vehicles.
High quality recordings with minimal background distractions where possible.
ORTF, X-Y, MS, NOS & Binaural recording methods used.

All audio recordings by Carl Perkins.

To purchase tracks go to:     https://aerobluesounds.bandcamp.com/

Please contact for commercial use.

2 Penny Coin Pusher in the Pier Arcade

AeroBlueSounds

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