Bandcamp hosts an amazing array of field recordings from around the world, made by musicians and sound artists as well as professional field recordists. In this column, we highlight the best sounds recorded outside the studio and released in the last month. This installment features Thai rainforests and British rivers; a train station in The Hague and utility boxes in Belfast; cicadas in Illinois and donkeys in the French countryside.
Toshiya Tsunoda & Taku Unami
Wovenland 3
Compact Disc (CD)
Wovenland, as a band, barely existed. “We have been active for a total of about 10 days, including meetings, in 7 years. We are now disbanding,” Toshiya Tsunoda and Taku Unami announced with the release of their third record. Wovenland, as a place, never existed at all. Though the duo takes recordings from real locations, they weave them together into a new landscape where the seemingly familiar becomes definitely strange. We go over to the library, down to the park, up to the rooftop, only to find each site transformed into something alien. Wovenland is a region in which the bowling alley plays a drum solo, and then the stream takes a turn. Its inhabitants go to parties; finding them too noisy, they go throw stones at birds. They shoot off fireworks underwater, then return to throw stones at the party. Wovenland 3 is the final installment of a three-part, six-disc exploration of this imaginary country and, if you’ve never visited yourself, the best place to start off.
Staalplaat Soundsystem
Station to Station 2008
One day in September 2008, puzzled commuters in The Hague’s Central Station noticed music in the air. Not piped-in muzak, but live music arising from the station itself, its trains and trams operating in a chaotic but definite synchrony. The vehicles entered the station in a choreographed pattern called “The Tsunami,” with horns and air brakes creating melodies and rhythms. Outside, the bells on the hundreds of bicycles parked in front began playing by themselves. Even the onlookers unwittingly joined the performance as surreptitiously placed microphones picked up sounds of rolling suitcases and idle chatter and broadcast them through speakers. In short, the entire structure, its trains, its staff, and its passengers, were turned into one giant musical instrument. The piece was called Station to Station, organized by art collective Staalplaat Soundsystem in collaboration with Nederlandse Spoorwegen, the Dutch national railway. It was an immense undertaking in service of a magical moment: for those travelers entering Central Station unaware, the world had truly, spontaneously, burst into song.
Locus Asper Locus
3 Ânes
Compact Disc (CD)
In the summer of 1878, Robert Louis Stevenson was in a bad way. Not yet the famous author of Treasure Island, Stevenson was still reliant on his parents and heartbroken after a controversial affair with a married American woman had ended. His solution was to set off through the French mountains with only a donkey for a companion to generate material for the classic travelogue Travels with a Donkey in the Cévennes. Benjamin Bondonneau, Lionel Marchetti, and Xavier Charles were inspired by this book to take their own trip through France’s Périgord region, bringing a donkey apiece. They also brought clarinets, synthesizers, and effects pedals to improvise with their natural surroundings. For a long time, their animal companions were the only ones privy to these delicate, searching sessions, but with 3 Ânes we can all listen in (and yes, the donkeys do make an appearance).
Matilde Meireles
Loop. And Again.
Compact Disc (CD)
Residents of Belfast may have noticed strange signs pasted onto telecommunication boxes around their neighborhoods in the past decade. One such sign, on Balfour Avenue, read: “Producing a continuous sound composed of: 92Hz, 120Hz, 178Hz, 235Hz, 408Hz, 580Hz, 1184Hz, 1327Hz, 3282Hz.” These were the work of Matilde Meireles, a sound artist and researcher whose X Marks the Spot project invited participants to alert her to any utility boxes emitting an audible hum. Meireles would then visit the box, record its drone, analyze it, and return with a poster advertising its frequencies. It was urban art meant to get people listening to their city. With Loop. And Again., Meireles takes the results of this research and loops and layers it with further electromagnetic, ambisonic, and hydrophonic recordings. The album is part social experiment, part sonic ecology, part environmental sound and part buzzing, drifting ambience. It should get the rest of the world listening to Belfast, too.
Benjamin Tassie
A Ladder Is Not the Only Kind of Time
Compact Disc (CD)
The River Rivelin was once home to 20 mills that powered forges and grinders with water wheels, making the region an important economic zone. Now, the remnants of those buildings can be seen at the bottom of the ponds along the river’s length. Benjamin Tassie traveled this line of ruins with unique instruments that are played by the river: a harpsichord, a hurdy gurdy, and a hydraulus or “water organ.” Tassie’s versions of these instruments, built by Sam Underwood, use a wooden water wheel and the river’s current to pluck strings and displace air, making haunting, disembodied music. As Tassie moves along the shore of the Rivelin, companions play historical instruments like the bass viol, nyckelharpa, and rebec. “Recording was a process of listening as much as it was of making sound; of standing still and becoming attuned, momentarily, to the landscape,” he says. The result is as serene as the river itself, a once-busy industrial center quieted by time.
John Grzinich
Ice Tectonics
Compact Disc (CD)
To record the ice, you have to know the ice. “The time of year, wind speed and direction, air temperature and pressure, water currents and salinity and moon cycles are but a few of the factors that influence the character and behavior of ice formations,” John Grzinich notes after years spent observing the ice in his adopted home of Estonia. Knowing exactly when the ice will emit spectacular sounds is impossible, but a thorough study of all these conditions can improve your chances. Luckily, Grzinich lives amid four lakes and, armed with his knowledge, was able to record all the cracks, booms, and shudders he could find. Winter 2024 was cold and spring 2024 was warm, leading to an unusually active period wherein these lakes repeatedly froze and melted, expanding and contracting, sending out startling shockwaves of sound. Grzinich recorded hours and hours of ice activity, but selected only the most dramatic for Ice Tectonics, a fascinating document of a winter landscape altering before your very ears.
Stephen Vitiello
Two Broods
The summer of 2024 featured a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence: the simultaneous emergence of two cicada broods with 13-year and 17-year cycles. These specific broods, known as XIII and XIX, only synchronize every 221 years; the last time it happened was in 1803. It’s a remarkable event because their territories overlap, making the normally loud insects doubly so. Stephen Vitiello was invited by biologist Kasey Fowler-Finn to record the cicadas in Southern Illinois, hoping to locate an area in which both broods coexisted. The pair set up in specific locations in Springfield and Rochester, hunting for the exact right conditions. What they recorded is remarkable: overwhelming waves of buzzing insects whose vibrations rise and fall in unison. Ultimately, Vitiello and Fowler-Finn could not find a place that hosted both broods; they had emerged a mere 15 minutes away from one another. Vitiello remedied this by manually layering recordings of each into one track, the epic, all-consuming finale of Two Broods. No need for a background in entomology for this one, just sit back and let the hum wash over you.
Craig Shepard
On Foot: Aubervilliers
Compact Disc (CD), Book/Magazine, Hat, Poster/Print, Sheet Music
Craig Shepard likes to walk. Growing up in Connecticut, he would walk through the night to listen to falling snowflakes. This was the perfect training for his eventual entry into the Wandelweiser group of composers, who are interested in the relationship between music and silence. He went on a 31-day, 250-mile walk in Zurich in 2001, then a 91-day, 780-mile walk in Brooklyn in 2012, finding music wherever he went. Now, Shepard has invited small groups to join him on his rambles. On Foot: Aubervilliers is a record of a series of walks he took in 2019, leading his participants around the French city in ever-widening circles. Halfway through each walk, they would stop while he made a field recording. These are soundwalks in the tradition of Hildegard Westerkamp and Viv Corringham, but turned into a communal event: Shepard’s walkers remain silent during the walk and absolutely still during the recordings. Now, you can listen in too, finding the music that Shepard hears with the help of interstitial pieces for music box and shruti box. Silence and stillness are not required, but strongly recommended.
Bruno Duplant
de ce paysage au loin nous ne percevons que des sons
Bruno Duplant describes his field recording practice as an “attempt at organizing chance,” or the creation of an “auto-fictional” narrative that the listener completes through imagination. On de ce paysage au loin nous ne percevons que des sons, we picture each sound’s source and how it is linked with those before and after: a French town traversed by a lone flâneur who observes others from afar (the title provides a hint: “From this landscape in the distance, we only perceive sounds”). In any event, the journey is a musical one, with an ethereal organ drone ever-present. Duplant, or his fictional counterpart, encounters a lovely concert (perhaps in a church?) with a choir backed by strings. Outside, a radio plays funk tunes. Later on, a group of birds accompanies a tentative piano. And then our protagonist vanishes, with this as his only trace: a charmed visit to a nameless town, already receding into memory.
Francisco López
Himavanta: Environmental Sound Matter from Thailand’s Rainforests
In a genre where being prolific is the norm, Francisco López might have everyone beat. His massive discography features pristine recordings from all around the world, and he updates it with astonishing frequency. But when he releases something like this, an 11-hour set of recordings from Thai rainforests, you can’t help but take notice. Himavanta is the latest in a series of Environmental Sound Matter releases from the Peruvian Amazon, New Zealand, Mexico, and elsewhere. The album unfurls over its epic runtime with stretches of calm that build into crescendos of noise. You might be tempted to put it on in the background—at 11 hours, what else could you do?—but it’s better experienced with full focus. Often enough, it will grab your attention and drag you into its immersive world no matter what.
