It’s May Day, at 4.51am, the nightingales are singing, and I’m about to start livestreaming the dawn chorus from Knepp Estate for Reveil8, a collective sound work, as it starts tracking the live sounds of sunrise across the world for the next 25 hours, finishing at 6am on the 2 May, International Dawn Chorus Day. 

Around 4am I started walking out in the moonlight, accompanied by the distant sound of Nightingales. By 5am the dawn chorus was in its full glorious flow and I was being treated to a cosy serenade by a Nightingale perched in the sallow eager to impress any females flying overhead.

As Artist-In-Residence here I'm recording soundscapes from the scrubland to capture the Knepp rewilding success story, of increasing biodiversity, including bird diversity as you can hear in this recording. As the former arable fields become thorny scrub, a habitat now almost totally erased from the wider countryside, it provides nesting habitat for a remarkable number of Nightingales. Also listen out for the Cuckoo, White Storks clattering their beaks, Song Thrush, Wren, Blackbirds, Blackcaps, Pheasant, Crows, Blue Tits, and a late entry by the Tawny Owl.

The Knepp Nightingales: The Owl and the Nightingale

Keynotes_seabird

I was fascinated by the Winterwatch programme where a Lesser Water Boatman was recorded using a hydrophone sliding his penis over his abdomen to try and attract a mate. This was also recorded using a hydrophone at 3 locations 29.1.23. There was still ice in the pond although it wasn't apparent at first and when it made contact with the contact mic there was a graunchy noise (especially towards the end). Note the Great Tit calling at the beginning and insect activity after 1.00 minute for 22 seconds. I couldn't tell if it was a Lesser Water Boatman but it sounded very similar.

Hydrophone 2 Hogsmill Nature Reserve Pond with Ice And Great Tit

A project I have been working on in collaboration with Yorkshire Sound Women's Network. Still ongoing!

Half of these recordings were recorded in Norway, by, or in, the sea. It's a perfect opportunity for me to play around with space and place.

Entirely up for interpretation, as ever, but I imagine the finished piece to centre around Norse mythology, particularly as I felt the oboe's allure could be that of a Norse mermaid, who drags the explorer under water.

Underwater, we hear the sound of motorboats, recorded with a hydrophone but full of artefacts created in the iZotope clean up process, but I enjoy the darkness of these.

The sound of gulls provide temporarily relief, a sense of air over water, before being dragged back under. Contact mics with various resonant objects such as a singing bowl and rails that run along the River Mersey ensue, before the victim is washed up in Lake Windermere, a recording I made on a trip two years ago with my Zoom H4N.

Norway - Oboe, seals
Ravenscar, Yorkshire - Motorboat, gulls
River Mersey, Liverpool - Rails
Lake Windermere - Lapping water, footsteps, birdsong
Home - singing bowl, water splashes

Ria - Sounding The Sea

A soundscape composition of St Andrews, West Dean. 

Connection between music and spaces. 
Architectural Acoustics. 
Looking at the way buildings sound.

West Dean Church Soundscape

Cadogan Pier, North Bank of the river Thames, beneath Albert Bridge near Chelsea Embankment.  Built in 1841 Cadogan Pier has been Chelsea's only river transport link for over 150 years and currently it is served by the Thames Clipper Uber Boat service to Putney and Canary Wharf. This is a Hydrophone recording (recording under the water) taken on a sunny February afternoon - you'll hear boats, a helicopter, traffic on the bridge, a few birds, the pier, wind and waves.

Chapter 1:  Cadogan Pier, North Bank of the Thames, Chelsea Embankment London

LAY DOWN with HEADPHONES ON! Imagine you are laying down in the grasses in a natural dip close to the top of Ditchling Beacon, in the South Downs National Park. 

This slow listen piece transports you from the winter right through the summer, teeming with insects, and back towards the howling winds of winter once more. 

This soundscape is created for listening while you are relaxing, laying down, with head on a pillow.

It was recorded during sixteen sessions across July 2022 to March 2023, by laying down in exactly the same spot at Ditchling Beacon, in a site of special scientific interest.

Layback with Nature - Ditchling Beacon

Biking Through Town

A second visit to the RSPB reserve in Dungeness, the Lade Pits site of the WW2 listening devices - the early radar Sound Mirrors.

Lade Pits, Dungeness

Aeolian Choir

an early spring wetland in central Sweden, just before dawn

The Knepp Nightingales: The Owl and the Nightingale

Hazel Reeves