Name: Blackbird at Dusk by Ryan Woods
Duration: 3 s
Description: Blackbird at Dusk, Aspen Grove, Ryebank Fields, 03/05/2025

Here is a sample of 30 min long of similar sounds.

Recorded in the oldest rainforest on Earth (one of the oldest), in Belum-Temenggor (Malaysia) during the night. 
We placed drop rigs attached to trees near salt licks.
One elephant found one of our rig, and detached it, then play around, eating mud, chewing and blowing with its trunk. 
Then he completely destroyed the gear. Hopefully we were able to read the memory card.

Wild Elephant Munching Mud, Blowing Trunk, Then Destroying Recorder

The Pollinator Pavilion was a walk-in sculpture created for the Skipton Big Ideas Exhibition by ArtHouse Jersey. This is a binaural version of a four-channel sound installation.

The soundtrack was created using field recordings of Jersey honeybees at Samares Manor. Most of the recordings were taken by placing a microphone inside a bee hive and leaving it alone for an hour. Every sound you hear was created using the sounds of bees.

The work plays homage to the vital pollinator of all our food crops, the honeybee, which pollinates thousands of flowers on its nectar-collecting journeys. To produce just one gram of wax, a honeybee needs to consume eight grams of honey, making wax a precious resource.

The energy-conscious honeybee is a master of ecological design. The Pollinator Pavilion takes its inspiration from the cell structures in which bees nest and store honey A hexagonal grid or honeycomb is the best way to divide a 2D surface into regions of equal area with the least total perimeter.

The installation is constructed from concentric hexagonal layers of cardboard tubes which rise steeply, echoing the church organ pipes which it sits in front of. Sculpture by Natasha Dettman and Nissen Richards Studio, built by Jim Oxenham.

Pollinator Pavilion

Journey Into Aloe

I've included a short spoken intro to this recording. 

Family groups of Colobus monkeys call in the early hours at Mt. Meru, each group starting off the next in a kind of 'mexican wave' around the mountain. If you listen carefully, you'll hear distant groups begin, and the sound of their wonderful growling build as nearby groups join the chorus. The loud yapping calls heard at beginning and end are those of Northern Greater Galagos (Bush Babies).

Colobus Monkeys calling at Mount Meru, Tanzania - intro by Andrew Skeoch

Blackbird at Dusk, Aspen Grove, Ryebank Fields, 03/05/2025

Blackbird at Dusk

"Please do not slam the door / Mancunian Snapshots" is a brisk collage of sound fragments captured in Manchester city centre during winter 2017. All kind of daily life’s details, funny moments, mini tragedies, street chats and noises are mashed up in quickly passing blocks of sound, constituting a fragmented personal portrait of the city. Sonic glimpses of private and public sphere - inside and outside the doors - are brought together as a spontaneous reaction to a separated and contrasting social life. Perception and time get blurred through the constant interplay between real and surreal and repetitions of same sonic material placed in different contexts.

Please do not slam the door / Mancunian Snapshots

Fl-utter-ances (Tree Songs) commissioned by Inside Out Dorset Festival 2018: This outdoor  installation emerged from sensory sessions & field recordings made around an ancient Black Poplar tree. Five convex mirrors with concealed sound systems each played a different soundtrack (Bats, choir singing the note D, sussurations, spoken word, humans vocalising birdsong) in a circle of trees in Sea Cliff Garden, Boscombe.  It was activated twice a day by the addition of a live singer and cellist.

Tree Songs_Live recording

Here We all Are (Lucier Mix)(extract) 
For a long time I’ve been thinking of what a feminist re-working of Lucier’s “I Am Sitting In A Room” might sound like. It’s a great work but I couldn’t help but wonder about Lucier’s position as the only sound in the room, the male artist apparently voluntarily isolated and cut off from the rest of society with his voice becoming more and more re-enforced and literally bouncing back at him from his environment reflecting only him. I wanted to see what happened when my voice was looped over and over again into the outside world so that it combined with the sounds of the other people and the other species that I share space with. 
In March and April 2020 the UK went into lockdown to try and slow the spread of the virus C19. The inner cities everywhere became quieter as traffic and planes decreased. The weather was unusually warm and sunny. Birds sang and insects buzzed. In my part of East London where the small gardens of terraced houses are divided from the neighbours gardens on three sides by fences, you could hear but not see the various activities of your often unknown neighbours at various points of the day and night. Many people no longer were allowed to go to work but worked in the garden, played with their children and  enjoyed being outside. 
All recordings Here We all Are (Lucier Mix) were made during the start of this time while sitting in the same position in my garden in Hackney, London in late March and April, 2020. 

I am very grateful to Vanessa Rossetto for inviting me to contribute to AMPLIFY 2020  quarantine and giving me the chance to try out my ideas. 
The full 16 minute track is available on AMPLIFY2020 Bandcamp https://amplify2020.bandcamp.com/album/here-we-all-are-lucier-mix?fbclid=IwAR20pdja4wEyF_nPe4vqOp-i5OY6rEK_neOAVV9D_n6MjFImgNvpClHy8vM

I am grateful that live in a house with a garden. 1 in 5 people in the UK live below the poverty line and many have suffered during the lockdown 
Any financial contributions from Here We all Are (Lucier Mix) will be donated to the Hackney Food Bank  https://hackney.foodbank.org.uk/

Here We All Are (Lucier Mix) extract

Ten Birmingham Roller Pigeons trained by Pigeon Pete fly with bespoke Pigeon Whistles designed and constructed by Nathaniel Mann at the UEA Campus as part of OCM's Audible Forces at the Norwich and Norfolk Festival. Recorded by Dan Fox.
Nathaniel Mann is the Embedded Composer in Residence at the Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford and OCM. 
More Info: www.pittriversmann.blogspot.com
Twitter: @animateddog

Pigeon Whistles at Norwich & Norfolk Festival. Audible Forces. (edit)

Hayley and Ryan chat about a recent sound walk around Ryebank Fields in Chorlton/Old Trafford as well as our changing soundscape during lockdown.

Warm wintery wishes to you all. Watch this space for our relaunch in the new year!

If you’re interested in the campaign to save Ryebank Fields, visit www.saveryebankfields.org

Introducing, The Manchester Ear Podcast | Ryebank Fields, Chorlton | 7.12.20

As Manchester’s streets and skyline are warped by the ever-accelerating process of urban renewal, the city’s edgelands and green spaces are at risk of being swallowed by waves of property development. Not only does this raise questions about the ecology of the city, as carbon sinks are flattened and wildlife is displaced, but it speaks to broader trends pushing urban residents away from shared space, community and local identity.  

This project shines a light on these spaces and the activists, academics, and local people who have taken up the daunting fight against corporate interests in the city in the name of biodiversity, urban ecology and community wellbeing. As we are faced with crises of both environment and mental health, the role of public green spaces has become ever more crucial in the eyes of those who enjoy, nurture, and maintain them.  

As the tide of urban growth edges closer to the open boundaries of our shared spaces, the trees, wildlife and insects continue their gentle movement, unaware that these spaces are likely reaching the end of their rich lineage. If nothing else, this project documents these final days. 

This work weaves together recorded conversations, composed music and field recordings from a handful of Manchester’s urban wildlife havens. Interviewees include community activists Julie Ryan and Tara Parry from ‘Friends of Ryebank Fields’, award-winning alternative tour guide Hayley Flynn (Skyliner) and Dr Jenna C. Ashton (artist, curator and lecturer at The University of Manchester).

Commissioned by Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival in 2020.

Blackbird at Dusk

Ryan Woods

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