autumn records
'leaves' cdr series
(this cdr series is dedicated to pure field recordings and environmental improvisation)
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(leaf 001) jeph jerman & greg davis - december 23rd, 2003 in cottonwood, arizona
1. (10:00)
2. (11:52)
3. (8:58)
4. (10:01)
my parents have a cabin in christopher creek AZ which is slightly east of payson. i normally go to visit them for the holidays and at other random times. on this trip down, i decided to give jeph jerman a call (a person whose music i enjoy immensely). jeph lives in cottonwood AZ which is up and over the mogollon rim just about 2-3 hours northwest of payson. so on the morning of december 23rd, i went hiking with my father and he helped me collect some nice sounding natural objects such as: manzanita leaves, pine cones and needles, reddish rocks, burrs, and some driftwood branches. then i made the trip and met up with jeph, after his hard day of nut mixing. his quaint and quiet house is situated off a gravelly road among a small cluster of 2 or 3 houses. he cooked up some grilled cheeses for us and i had my first ever cup of genmai cha tea. we chatted for a bit about music and things as i admired his vast and inspiring collection of natural objects carefully scattered about various tables and areas around his house. jeph stoked up a really nice sounding fire in his old wood burning stove, which you can hear playing with us in the background. we recorded these 4 pieces using selections from jeph's collection of natural objects. i had the idea that we should turn up the gain really high on the microphones and play really quietly. this led to some really nice quiet and sparse playing but it also made the recording a bit hissy, which i dont mind so much now after a few listens. track 3 is indebted to 'inlets' by john cage where the performers are instructed to tip conch shells filled with water to make unpredictable gurgles and bubbles. this was cage's idea of "contingency' improvisation. we filled up some of jeph's conch shells with water and gave it a try ourselves. after we finished recording, we listened back to a little bit of it and jeph showed me a few art/sound books by hugh davies, steve peters and akio suzuki. i said farewell and headed back through the pitch black darkness to christopher creek, encountering a half-dozen or so elk along the way. i returned to my parent's cabin with refreshed ears ready to hear the world again after having been deadened by too much city life. (greg davis)
(leaf 002) greg davis & steven hess - live at buddy gallery in chicago, illinois - january 21st, 2004
1. (25:53)
steven and i have been improvising together for a little over a year now. we worked through alot of material where his improvised percussion was processed in realtime by my laptop. in my quest to get away from computers, we started improvising with natural objects, small percussion, and toy instruments. and after my playing experience with jeph in AZ, i decided that steven and i should focus our improvisations around natural objects because this is something we both have dabbled with for some time. so we began to collect things as best we could in the city. we walked around my block and down steve's driveway, tearing up trees and grass and bushes to find things that sounded good. i even went and ordered a few dried plants and seed pods online and bought some bamboo and polished stones at pier1. unfortunately this is what we had to resort to in chicago. we played a couple times a week until the buddy gallery show, exploring different sounds. buddy gallery has become a squatted, trashed out, free for all, anything goes kinda gallery. they have been holding improv sessions there on wednesday nights for at least a year now. so we show up and wait around a bit for dave (the show organizer) to arrive. we set out a sky blue quilt on the floor that my mother made for me and arranged our huge battery of natural objects and small sound makers while the other band, steltch (you know the kind of band with a guy with a samick guitar playing 'ragtime doll' through a whammy pedal and other assorted FX, a trombonist with pick up mic through cheap digitech multiFX, guy playing 'weird' scales on some unknown moog synth, and 4 to 5 drummers) set up and soundchecked indefinitely. our set was augmented by a dying fire alarm beeping at regular intervals, a loud fan drone from the power amplifier for the speakers, the 'el' train out back, creaky floors and talking and coughing, and even a random drum or cymbal hit by a member of steltch getting bored or restless. despite ample battery power, my minidisc decided for some reason to stop recording after 25 minutes and 53 seconds. we continued to play for another 15-20 minutes after that but we think this recording is just enough. we left after the 1st or 2nd piece by steltch. (greg davis)
(leaf 003) greg davis & zach wallace - january 13th, 2004 in chicago, illinois
1. (3:36)
2. (9:53)
3. (7:17)
although we don't get to see or talk to each other that much, we maintain a close friendship. zach is one of those guys that you'll never not be friends with after becoming his friend. zach and i hadn't seen each other in at least a year. so, i convinced him to come out to chicago and visit before he headed back to school at bard and we resumed our busy lives. we did some record shopping. brewed up some homemade herbal tea, made some food (including kale and a coleslaw consisting of turnip, parsnip, daikon, and carrots), caught up on 'lost' time, listened to a bit of british folk music, and went to andy's musical instruments store. we managed to take some time to play and record some improvisations. zach brought along a few things he had gathered recently. some wonderful sounding thick leaves, branches with pods, an assortment of pinecones, and some stones. we recorded about 60 minutes worth of sounds. it seems that the best 3 tracks fit nicely onto a 3" cdr. track 1 is us playing motoric rhythms with bundles of shishkebab skewers on 2 different size large triangles. track 2 is sounds of water and stones (and maybe a few other objects). track 3 is a collection of shakers and rattles. zach and i hadn't played music together in at least 3 years, so it was very nice to join up in the moment where we are in our lives and make this recording. i hope i get to see zach again soon. (greg davis)
(leaf 004) jeph jerman - trees & shrubs - 2000
1. (29:39)
when i first moved to cottonwood in 1999, i spent a lot of time walking around with my recorder, sampling the sonic surroundings. i was surprised at the difference in sonority compared to seattle, where i previously lived. the dryness here lent everything a crispness and fragility that i had forgotten. i experimented a lot with contact mics and my stereo cassette recorder, spacing the mics far apart and attaching them to two (or more) things, mostly plants. these recordings are from my yard, and include a catclaw acacia and several other plants which i've forgotten now. the recorder i used would not allow me to monitor the recording as it happened (who designs these things?!?!?!), so i had to wait until it was over to hear it. i am often amazed at the wide array of sounds and timbres registered by these cheap devices. (jeph jerman)
(leaf 005) f.s. blumm - italian short story - 2002
1. rain on the tent (0:54)
2. rain in the sacristy (phase 1 and 2) (0:08)
3. going to the VW bus to drive to the mayor's place to buy tomatoes 'canto' (0:28)
4. driving back home after having bought tomatoes at the mayor's place (1:32)
5. squashing the tomatoes (0:14)
6. washing bottles for the tomato sauce (0:21)
7. chopping firewood (0:26)
8. breaking up firewood (0:35)
9. lighting the oven to cook the sauce (0:47)
10. chilling on the porch 'kitchen in the back' (1:14)
11. cricket in the night 'very close' (1:19)
In 2002, I moved with my family for half a year to Italy, close to the sea to a place in the countryside near Genoa. We tried to form a community together with a bunch of Italians. we were living in tents and some ancient ruins (there even was a little church on the area, actually the most proper building, which we mainly used for storing wood) We tried to build a strawbale house but it was raining so much in this year that we really almost swam away. our main hobby was getting the truck out of the mud (we invented a lot of amazing techinques like knotting the rope to the back-wheel and then to a tree to use the car as a wind, towing itself) unfortunately, the project failed and in the end we broke up, still it was a very, very nice experience. I never heard so much silence in my life. I never ate so many flowers. On these recordings you hear first of all, the rain, Then, after the sun came out, we made tomato sauce (eating was the second main hobby, I mean, we drank wine out of 15 gallon containers and bought tomatoes bucketwise, you know) So on this day, we drove to the mayor's private house to buy his tomatoes. we squashed the tomatoes. we washed bottles to store the tomato sauce. we lit the outside oven and cooked the sauce on it. In the end we had a nice spaghetti tomato sauce for ,well, a few days. We had a chill out hippy session on the porch (you can hear my 2 year old son Wenzel asking Stefano a mixture of 'Come stai?' (how are you?) and 'Cosa fai?' (what are you doing?)) The last track are crickets in the night. I think that this recording is especially amazing because it sounds like an electronic noise but it really is (as all the other recordings) a pure field recording with no editing done at all (just recorded from a very close distance) enjoy. (f.s. blumm)
(leaf 006) greg davis & corey fuller - two perspectives at two locations along the sumiyairi river in naguri-mura, saitama prefecture, japan - march 2nd, 2004
1. logs (12:50)
2. riverside (13:29)
My wife and I moved to Naguri 3 years ago to find a more humane pace of life than what we had found in Tokyo. Naguri is a small village of about 2600 people, located 2 hours outside of Tokyo, in a valley with a river running through it. The average age of the population is 65, and there are no supermarkets, convenience stores, shopping malls or even a train station, which is quite rare considering its proximity to Tokyo. Naguri is the sort of village where major local news consists of a wild boar being spotted crossing from the east side of the river to the west side, and wild monkeys coming down from the mountains to steal vegetables from disgruntled local farmers. Though it is no longer so, a couple hundred years ago, it was quite an affluent village, supported by a local logging industry. Giant cedars were cut down and sent floating down the Naguri river to Tokyo bay where they could be exported or sent to other parts of Japan. Some of the logs from Naguri have been used in the construction of famous temples across Japan. Small villages like Naguri are becoming more rare, though. The Japanese government is making efforts to eradicate all small villages by merging them with larger cities nearby. While this maybe have economic benefits for the village, it often comes at the expense of culture and local character as the small villages inevitably become commercialized and ‘modernized.’ Sadly, many old villages are fast disappearing just like much of the older population with its traditions and culture. On his recent Japan tour, Greg came out to stay with us for a few days in the country. He had mentioned before he arrived that he wanted to make some field recordings together. Greg had the idea of recording a piece together at the same location yet with two separate mics/recorders and with some distance between us. The idea was to capture two different perspectives on the same location and then to mix them together to create one unified piece. This idea was immensely appealing to me because, having spent most of my life in Japan as an American and Greg being from the States, this idea seemed a perfect embodiment of our friendship and time together in Naguri. The first piece consists of us playing large cedar logs with smaller logs, sticks, bark and other items lying around. Our mics were positioned at opposite ends of the pile of logs where we began by slowly walking toward each other until we crossed paths in the middle. Halfway through the piece we began to toss some of the smaller logs into the air on top of the larger ones, creating more unpredictable and uncontrolled rhythms. Each log had its own resonant pitch, and even contained different pitches within it, depending on where it was struck and how thick the circumference was. One particular log seemed to match the resonant frequency of the valley, as it would echo sharply off of the hillsides. The second piece was recorded at a quiet bend of the Sumiyairi river. We began by sitting and playing small river-rocks, leaves, twigs and water, but eventually ended up on our feet, playing larger branches and stones. At one point Greg grabbed a very large pile of branches (it looked like he had uprooted an entire tree) to add to the mix, which nearly made me fall into the river with laughter (I managed to suppress my laughter though for the sake of the recording). Although Greg and I had never improvised together before, there was a natural easiness and joy of creating together, as well as an immediate connection and mutual understanding. My hope is that Greg and I will have more opportunities in the future to play music together in all of the different geographical locations in which our paths cross. (corey fuller)
(leaf 007) keith fullerton whitman - birdsightings - may 28th, 2000
1. 52800 0136pm (1:43)
2. 52800 0307pm (2:02)
3. 52800 0310pm (0:13)
4. 52800 0335pm (6:41)
5. 52800 0432pm (0:58)
6. 52800 0439pm (3:04)
7. 52800 0512pm (0:13)
8. 52800 0544pm (6:21)
9. 52800 0553pm (4:27)
10. 52800 0625pm (4:09)
21 cedar street may 28 2000 one oktava mk319 microphone 4 inches from standard wild birds unlimited tube feeder one blue microphone cable through crack in window small mixer fed into old mathlab machine pro tools let run for 6 hours or so edited down "events" to 30 solid minutes birds sighted gray headed junco morning dove common grackle sparrow crow 300hz low-cut filter removed ancillary rumble close-up feeding and chatter remains in foreground slight traffic and environmental noise in the background no processing or augmentation otherwise then or now if cats are present please use speakers for their edification listen in comfortable surroundings all the best (keith fullerton whitman)
(leaf 008) sawako & asuna - aihara - april 20th & may 7th, 2004
1. ogawa, mori, hatake (13:13)
2. bird song 01 (3:06)
3. mori no naka (4:19)
4. suiro (5:15)
5. bird song 02 (1:44)
6. shamisen (0:40)
7. yokeijo (1:55)
Aihara is a town where asuna lives. In Aihara, there is a poultry farm, hills and woods, a baseball field for children, fields and soil, a small river, and a yummy ice cream shop. It takes about 1 and a half hours to get there from the center of Tokyo by train. These tracks were recorded by sawako (one afternoon when she visited Aihara) and asuna (one morning in the woods of Aihara) (sawako)
(leaf 009) ben owen - florida everglades - february 2004
1. (1:00)
2. (8:44)
3. (26:08)
4. (1:51)
these recordings were made in february 2004 on an overnight canoe trip into the back-country of the florida everglades. in 30+ knot winds my partner summer and I entered west lake in the north-western part of everglades national park which connects to several lakes, groves, and creeks, before reaching the 7.7 mile destination at Garfield Bight on the gulf coast. the first two recordings are from a contact mic submerged in water from the moving canoe. soundings happen as the contact mic brushes through sea vegetation and the changing water depth. the second two recordings were edited from a longer recording entering and exiting the grove between The Lungs and Alligator Creek. the low quality radio shak binaural microphones were placed inside the canoe. the vast expanse of groves that grow in the everglades are an amazing organic structure. the overhanging groves connect two land-masses stretching over to create a tunnelesque passageway that one would have to duck from low passing limbs, branches, vines, and spider-webs. the grove paths are kept just wide enough for one canoe to pass through. along the banks alligators rested in the sun, some in small groups, some with mouths propped open on a fallen tree, or with eyes gently floating above water watching us pass. the sound reflected here within the groves is the reflection from the hull of the canoe and the overhanging grove. (ben owen)
(leaf 010) shedding - hello st. louis!!! - may 28th, 2004
1. lapping stairs (11:44)
2. cobblestone wash (8:17)
3. concrete wash (16:43)
played in st. louis while on tour recently. the night of the show had intense storms, and flooding ensued as we headed from the radio station to the club. the next morning, after a breakfast fruit cup, we headed to the mighty st. louis arch, as sara p. had never been. instead of ascending the manmade wonder that i had visited so recently, i decided to enjoy the beautiful weather in the park, by the mississippi river, with bobby m. and joe s.; paul d. was napping in the van. i had my minidisc and mic with the intent to capture some sounds, but i was largely aimless, which often leads to the most fun times capturing moments. bobby m. suggested i record the river. how obvious and cliche i thought. as they headed back for the van, i walked down to the flooded waterway. soon, as a young boy and his grandmother departed nearby, i was lost in the hypnotic sounds of the river. i quickly realized i should record these moments of relaxation and quiet on an otherwise chaotic tour. if nothing more than as an audio memory of the refreshing morning of solitude and meditation. there are three separate tracks. first, the water lapping against a flooded stairwell, the slapping sound seeming so alien to my ears. the second track, the water washing over a flooded bank of cobblestones, the sounds falling somewhere in between the lapping stairs and the final track: the wash of water over a flooded slope of smooth concrete. (connor bell)
(leaf 011) jeph jerman & greg davis - memorial day - may 31st, 2004
1. (21:02)
another meeting with jeph in cottonwood arizona. this time a scorching hot day at the end of may. we decided to record outside in front of his house. one of the ideas in this improvisation is friction sounds. making sounds by scraping or rubbing or dragging objects along different surfaces. at the beginning it is branches and stalks along concrete. and at the end jeph and i in stereo coaxing resonant frequencies from the windows of his house with long walking sticks. this was our memorial day for sound and listening. (greg davis)
(leaf 012) jeph jerman - harvester ants - march 24th, 2001
1. (29:44)
ants walking and talking on contact microphones.... (jeph jerman)
(leaf 013) greg davis - wind and... - july 10th, 2004
cd1 - wind and paper (75:02)
cd2 - wind and bamboo (74:59)
on a warm and breezy day in chicago this summer, i was bored in my studio and contemplating music of the wind, so i decided to hang some things out of my window to see and hear how the wind would interact with certain objects. first, i attached 4 contact mics to 4 different sheets of paper and let those dangle out of my window. i recorded the sounds of these papers flapping and flying and scraping in the wind. second, i attached 4 contact mics to 4 different pieces of bamboo. i placed the pieces of bamboo close together to create a bamboo 'chime'. i recorded the sounds of the bamboo clinking together gently and quietly in the wind. all in all, a very pleasant summer's day. the length of the recordings are meant to suggest that these sounds could go on forever as long as there was some sort of wind and as long as the objects last. (greg davis)
(leaf 014) jon mueller - emerson hi fidelity - december 2004
1. 16 (11:57)
2. 78 (9:52)
3. 45 (8:57
recordings of jon's old turntable motor spinning at 16, 78 and 45 rpm. sounds like primitive pansonic or raster-noton.... (jon mueller)
(leaf 015) lawrence english - limnology - july & december 2004
1. glenelg (4:34)
2. dark water (3:50)
3. le lac (4:00)
4. snap, crackle, pop (1:36)
5. hydromys chrysogaster (3:20)
6. collecting clicks + chirps (7:30)
7. henley jetty (0:38)
Ever since I went diving at Talabudgerra Creek just south of the Gold Coastwhen on holidays with my family in my youth, I've had a curiosity about the sounds that exist below the surface of the water. I'd always hear this clicking and chirping whenever I went diving there - it sounded so unnatural, like the crackle of a record slowly spinning endlessly. This curiosity was ignited again in 2003 after diving on the Barrier Reef with a friend from New York - this time the crackling was almost deafening, and once I was back on the mainland I started researching again - the sound I could hear was fish communicating. It was amazing and within a few weeks I'd hunted out a hydrophone to facilitate collecting some of these sounds that had ignited my interest so long ago. After a week or so in New Zealand during July 2004 making recordings of a variety of marshes, lakes and creeks (which produced some nice results, although much of NZ's waterways are almost devoid of life), I attended a residency project in Adelaide. While I had a few days free I made my way to the Glenelg Pier to make some oceanic recordings. Needless to say I was just awe-struck once I put the hydrophone in the water - the sound was just so completely unnatural - snaps, crackles, pops, chirps, buzzes and all manner of other electronic sounding tones. I used some of these recordings as the basis for some radio work and then in December, I had some time free again to get back to recording and needless to say I was keen to do some more underwater work. So I headed out late at night to a number of waterholes, rivers and ponds around Brisbane. Apart from seeing a giant water rat, a fox chasing ducks in the moonlight and a range of other unusual activities that tend to reveal themselves the moment you sit down still and quiet in natural environments, I was fortunate to collect some wonderfully synthetic sounding underwater environments. Listening to these environments the unusual qualities of them truly amaze me - there's a whole other sound world existing just inches below the water's surface and these recordings document just a few of the moments going on unheard each day and night. (lawrence english)
(leaf 016) dallas simpson - a meditation for spring - may 23rd, 1998
1. a meditation for the Declaration of the Báb - lambley dumbles
near the village of lambley, nottinghamshire
daybreak
may 23rd 1998
(33:37) (edited)
Part of a series of pastoral recordings inspired by the Sacred Writings of the Bahá'í Faith. This work takes the form of a walk upstream at dawn along a beautiful, small, wooded, steep sided stream valley near the village of Lambley, Nottinghamshire, UK. There are a number of small wooded valleys in the area collectively called "the Dumbles". The walk upstream ends at a small hissing gushing waterfall and the journey described, recorded and performed on a Baha'i Holy Day, May 23rd - "The Declaration of the Báb", has deep spiritual significance, water being symbolic of the Divine Presence - "Refresh my heart, O my God, with the living waters of Thy love, and give me a draught, O my Master, from the chalice of Thy tender mercy," The Báb. (dallas simpson)
(leaf 017) ryan gregory & christine jeanine - 1123 morley ave. - july 15th, 2005
1. (37:39)
This is a document of our second time recording rain on our front porch. I walked out with the mic as the rain began to fall, late afternoon, raising the mic to hear the wooden sounds of our roof being battered. Meanwhile, Christine brought out plastic bags, a watering jug, and pots of different sizes, arranging them beneath the columns of dripping water falling from the awning's edge. The idea was to take the music generated by the falling rain and give it new voices by using commonplace objects from our human existence, but this edge was the primary mediation between us and the rain, breaking down the fallen water into individual rhythmic elements that are constantly in flux and in phase with each other. Listening back now, I'm amazed by the polyrhythms that emerged, but I'm also struck by the amount of completely singular sounds I hear; the thunder that begins just after the rain, after it had slowed down to a drizzle, began to pour; the brief appearance of bird song; the sound of the pots being knocked together as Christine rearranges them; my neighbor's FM radio. (ryan gregory)
(leaf 018) bill thompson - mcalpine construction site, footdee - july 20th, 2005
1. (12:25)
footdee is a small scottish fishing village off of the north sea. having just moved here a year ago from texas, it’s still a novel experience for me to walk my dog along the beach each night. the sonic landscape is vastly different from that of texas with its cicadas, crickets, frogs and the like. in footdee, or ‘fitee’ as the locals pronounce it, the most pervasive sound is that of wind and sea. you either notice the huge gusts and crashing waves, or you notice their absence on the occasional calm night. on this particular evening however, something remarkable was ringing out across the village. on the edge of the harbor, a new control tower is being constructed. as the wind was blowing through the structure and the various pipes of the scaffolding, it was causing them to resonate and literally ring out across the village. the sound carried by the wind was absolutely ethereal, and seemed to hang in the air. returning that night and dodging the lights of ships coming in and out of the harbor, i scaled the fence to make the recording from which this selection is taken. (bill thompson)
(leaf 019) scott smallwood - many voices - july 2005
1. rasping edge
2. dripping dry
3. between them
4. the frog
5. ruuuh
6. twittering
7. big train
8. passion
In the heat and humidity, I struggled to capture small sounds of many voices. I moved my microphone around to frame things: changes of angle, subtle movements towards and away, slowly dancing; trying to hear past the voices to the distant train, the highway, and fireworks. I tried to find little pockets and choruses of sound inside the lush, green vegetation. I listened for drops of water on leaves, lizards scurrying up branches, tree frogs, mosquitos, cicadas, crickets, and unidentified aliens. I heard the humming chords of the air conditioners, the planes overhead, the soda machines, adding their dark, long voices to the sonic tapestry of Florida. (scott smallwood)
(leaf 020) jonathan way - kalaloch / skagit - winter - spring 2004
Kalaloch:
1. Through coastal forest
2. Clear stream flecked with foam
North Jetty:
3. Seafoam
4. Ocean rain
Skagit:
5. Raindrops on Broadleaf Maple leaf
6. Skagit flow
i made this collection of recordings during a season i spent working and traveling in western washington. the field recordings are from three locations along the pacific coast and skagit river, at times in the form of "contact" recordings (using an ordinary microphone): textural distortion from seafoam scattered on a beach after a late winter storm; percussive rhythms from a large maple leaf sheltering the microphone from rainfall along the skagit towards the beginning of summer. (jonathan way)
(leaf 021) loving space kindergarten & corey fuller - nature's noises - october 24th 2005
1. sticks & stones & other stuff
2. sound party
3. a walk
4. chestnut thunder
Nineteen 5 year-olds exploring autumn through sound...each child collected a sound making object...sea shells, acorns, nuts, seeds, dried sunflowers, chestnuts, sea water, rain water, apples, autumn leaves, sticks, stones, bones, branches, sea weeds, grasses etc....later they sat in a large semi-circle and collectively explored the sounds of autumn they had gathered...i love that you can hear the smallness of their hands as they intuitively explore these sounds...recorded with a pair of AKG C414 mics...low frequency traffic rumble filtered out... (corey fuller)
(leaf 022) lawrence english - suikinkutsu - december 2005
1. plink
2. slowly turns blue
3. shimmering black hawk
4. bamboo shinjuku
5. two points pouring
6. raven songs
7. taima bells
8. chamber
9. sitting on the very edge
I owe a great debt of thanks to David Toop, who introduced me to the existence of the Suikinkutsu through his wonderful text Haunted Weather. The Suikinkutsu, or Japanese Water Koto as it is sometimes known, is in my opinion one of the most beautifully executed sound installations - not only is the acoustic quality of the piece amazingly refined and engaging, but its placement within and relationship between environment, traditional belief and mythology. The Suikinkutsu is essentially a hollowed out cavern in the soil, through which water drips via small holes at the top of the cavern. As the drips hit the surface of the water within the cavern, the resulting sound is amplified and effectively filtered, creating a resonate tone that fluctuates depending on the frequency and size of water droplets creating an impressively melodic array of sounds. These recordings collected here were made at three locations in Japan during my tour there in December and January 2005/6. My thanks must be extended to Kazuyuki Kishino, Yudai + Ai Yamamoto, Kanshu-san and my wife Rebecca, who all assisted me greatly in making these recordings. For me, the Suikinkutsu (best represented on this disc by the recordings made at Taima-Dera, also one of the most beautiful gardens I have encountered in Japan) generates a reflection of one aspect of Japan's cultural sensibility - a timelessly refined sense of aesthetics and an innate understanding of spatial composition that seamlessly aligns the Suikinkutsu within a cultivated natural (or as increasingly is the case, urban) setting. (lawrence english)
(leaf 023) marcel türkowsky - usedom - august 13th 2002
1. inside the train to usedom
2. just arrived
3. the station hall
4. thursty, in the station market
5. knackel part 1
6. surrounded by nice things at a small market
7. three ravens and their ideas
8. knackel part 2
9. wind micro feedback
10. close to a small lake and a boat trying to leave
11. a boat still trying to leave and my whistling
12. storm and stress
13. die see
14. sprinkler
15. wood behind ?
16. tiny falling
17. crickets singing the bon nuit
One strong experience i remember from my past is to have been a trackrunner for five years in an eastgerman sportsclub in berlin. My discipline was 800m track. Two times a year i went with a sportsteam to the island usedom in the baltic sea, close to the polish border. It is the sunrichest island in germany and known for its curing climate. So we would always go there to be part of a big training camp. We trained everyday doing a bunch of different exercises, gymnastics, systematical run, running through the country side, along the beach, swimming in the sea, playing ballgames and even in the evening we would play strategy games. Never really having a resting time just during the sleep. I stopped to be a member when i was 13 and started to play the bass. One year before, my father gave me a small stereo microphone to record like he said "trees and animals or your brother and you playing the acoustic guitar and so many other things". I never used it. Years later i finally started doing fieldrecordings/soundpictures as an alternative to fotographs to be able to imagine the memoriy of a space differentely. Whenever i made a trip i searched for a wildlife into areas were musical abstraction and identifiable sound can freely interact. Finally i remembered the island usedom and decided to go there again. I took this particular quite rusty small stereomicrophon, my recorder, tapes, some memories, "conference pour les oiseaux" a really nice collection of interviews with john cage, a sleeping back and swimmingshorts. The time there felt like i am again this young trackrunner boy just with a different mission - to listen. I recorded during one day and a bit of the night. Sometimes i interacted with concrete actions in the space like whistling, moving strange or touching the microphon and performed rolling tiny stones into the water in front of crickets singing the bon nuit. (Marcel Türkowsky)
(leaf 024) greg davis - winooski river canoe trip - july 24th 2005
1. (51:16) - time lapse edit
this recording was taken last summer on a canoe trip down the winooski river in burlington, vermont. i went on the trip with my good friends mike and ben. we dropped the canoe in at the winooski salmon hole and travelled down the river many miles almost to the mouth of the river where it empties out into lake champlain. i recorded about 2 hours worth of the trip with my soundman binaural microphones and my edirol R1. sounds along the way include kingfishers, irrigation pumps for the intervale farms, airplanes, paddling water, cows cooling off in the water and swatting flies with their tails, the sound of my skin getting terribly sunburned and me eating the best potato chips in the world. i edited out all of the talking in the recording and was left with 51 minutes of other sounds. thanks to mike and ben for the beautiful summer journey, lets do it again. and thanks to david at homophoni for putting up with my back and forthness regarding this recording. listening to this recording with some nice headphones is highly encouraged. (greg davis)
(leaf 025) jen boyd - 8 trees - spring 2006
1. grey (10:27)
2. palm (14:25)
3. eucalyptus (12:44)
4. pine (7:24)
5. sway (2:58)
6. rocky tree (10:03)
7. rain blossom (7:25)
8. hollow branch (4:13(
These are recordings of trees I made around Southern California in the Spring of 2006 and most were done at the Los Angeles Arboretum on a single afternoon. I went to the arboretum several times that spring, drawn by the surreality of the setting and the chance to wander off and get lost in a stand of trees with no two quite alike. The Arboretum tracks here are from the eucalyptus forest and several different palm trees. There's also a recording made on a rainy day in the hills behind my old house in Castaic and a recording of a tree in the San Gabriel Mountains. Every time I record a new tree I am captivated with all of the different textures it creates. No two trees sound the same. (jen boyd)
(leaf 026) matthew mullane - sound-shapes from rural ohio - september 2005 - may 2006
1. field station at dusk (4:00)
2. bog (3:57)
3. sunday, march 26 6:30am (5:52)
4. silver creek farm (2:24)
5. eldon-russel (5:58)
6. mosquito lake from a jetty (13:13)
The majority of these recordings, aside from the concluding piece, serve as minor aural landmarks to the small town, or rather village, as it is still called, of Hiram, Ohio. With its topography varying as much as its weather patterns; the village and its outlying landscape consisting of checkered farmland, rivers, and dense forest areas oozes with sonic opportunity. Winged creatures, both insect and avian, seem to thrive here; they often culminate in huge displays (or perhaps protests) following one of the aforementioned weather shifts. The opening recording is of such a shift, as Spring refused to do so, and Winter mercilessly harassed animals of all sorts. And similarly, "Bog", recorded a mere thirteen days later, documents a large group of various insects, frogs and birds all gathered around to be heard following a sudden and very violent thunderstorm. Yet, there are tranquil moments as well, as the chickens will tell you. The closing recording is not in Hiram, but Cortland, some 30 minutes East, where boats and geese travel on a large man-made lake, and where I sat on a small rock jetty recording them all. (matthew mullane)
(leaf 027) jeph jerman & greg davis - australia - july 16th & 18th 2006
1. arts house, melbourne (21:03)
2. 1/4 inch, wollongong (22:53)
these are 2 different sets from my recent tour of australia / new zealand with jeph. the first set is from melbourne at the arts house. this concert was part of the liquid architecture 7 festival. jeph and i had a large collection of items set up on a big table. many of the objects we collected around australia during our trip. for this show jeph and i each had 2 microphones panned left and right to work with. we were able to pan sounds manually by moving them under the mics in different ways and directions. a nice quiet focused performance. the second set is from wollongong at the university theatre which is called the 1/4 inch for shows i think. this was one of the last shows of our tour so jeph and i were a bit road weary at that point. we set up on the floor with a couple of mics for amplifictation. this recording is from my stereo mic on the floor in front of us. the set starts with the sound of rain falling on the roof of the building. another nice quiet set using natural objects and things. (greg davis)
(leaf 028) jeph jerman & greg davis - new zealand - july 10th & 11th 2006
1. matinee, new plymouth (24:45)
2. artspace, auckland (21:07)
two sets from my recent tour of australia / new zealand with jeph. the first set is from new plymouth at matinee. matinee was a posh dance type of club with a nice bar and loungey atmosphere to it. we were billed as 3 international sound art DJs. we were told that we need to fill 3 hours worth of music for the night. jeph and i and lawrence went down to the beach in new plymouth and gathered a trunk full of driftwood. for this performance, jeph and i set up on the floor of the lounge near the stage and both played driftwood for 25 minutes. its a continuous active texture. it was quite a work out and jeph and i were both sweating by the end of the set. the locals were baffled but one young surfer connected to it on a natural / maori level i think. a strange but memorable night. the second set is from artspace in auckland. a lovely gallery and nice sounding room. jeph and i played acoustically in the space with our range of natural objects collected in new zealand. (greg davis)
if you are interested in submitting some field recordings for the series, please contact gregorytylerdavis at gmail dot com
'leaves' cdr series
(this cdr series is dedicated to pure field recordings and environmental improvisation)
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(leaf 001) jeph jerman & greg davis - december 23rd, 2003 in cottonwood, arizona
1. (10:00)
2. (11:52)
3. (8:58)
4. (10:01)
my parents have a cabin in christopher creek AZ which is slightly east of payson. i normally go to visit them for the holidays and at other random times. on this trip down, i decided to give jeph jerman a call (a person whose music i enjoy immensely). jeph lives in cottonwood AZ which is up and over the mogollon rim just about 2-3 hours northwest of payson. so on the morning of december 23rd, i went hiking with my father and he helped me collect some nice sounding natural objects such as: manzanita leaves, pine cones and needles, reddish rocks, burrs, and some driftwood branches. then i made the trip and met up with jeph, after his hard day of nut mixing. his quaint and quiet house is situated off a gravelly road among a small cluster of 2 or 3 houses. he cooked up some grilled cheeses for us and i had my first ever cup of genmai cha tea. we chatted for a bit about music and things as i admired his vast and inspiring collection of natural objects carefully scattered about various tables and areas around his house. jeph stoked up a really nice sounding fire in his old wood burning stove, which you can hear playing with us in the background. we recorded these 4 pieces using selections from jeph's collection of natural objects. i had the idea that we should turn up the gain really high on the microphones and play really quietly. this led to some really nice quiet and sparse playing but it also made the recording a bit hissy, which i dont mind so much now after a few listens. track 3 is indebted to 'inlets' by john cage where the performers are instructed to tip conch shells filled with water to make unpredictable gurgles and bubbles. this was cage's idea of "contingency' improvisation. we filled up some of jeph's conch shells with water and gave it a try ourselves. after we finished recording, we listened back to a little bit of it and jeph showed me a few art/sound books by hugh davies, steve peters and akio suzuki. i said farewell and headed back through the pitch black darkness to christopher creek, encountering a half-dozen or so elk along the way. i returned to my parent's cabin with refreshed ears ready to hear the world again after having been deadened by too much city life. (greg davis)
(leaf 002) greg davis & steven hess - live at buddy gallery in chicago, illinois - january 21st, 2004
1. (25:53)
steven and i have been improvising together for a little over a year now. we worked through alot of material where his improvised percussion was processed in realtime by my laptop. in my quest to get away from computers, we started improvising with natural objects, small percussion, and toy instruments. and after my playing experience with jeph in AZ, i decided that steven and i should focus our improvisations around natural objects because this is something we both have dabbled with for some time. so we began to collect things as best we could in the city. we walked around my block and down steve's driveway, tearing up trees and grass and bushes to find things that sounded good. i even went and ordered a few dried plants and seed pods online and bought some bamboo and polished stones at pier1. unfortunately this is what we had to resort to in chicago. we played a couple times a week until the buddy gallery show, exploring different sounds. buddy gallery has become a squatted, trashed out, free for all, anything goes kinda gallery. they have been holding improv sessions there on wednesday nights for at least a year now. so we show up and wait around a bit for dave (the show organizer) to arrive. we set out a sky blue quilt on the floor that my mother made for me and arranged our huge battery of natural objects and small sound makers while the other band, steltch (you know the kind of band with a guy with a samick guitar playing 'ragtime doll' through a whammy pedal and other assorted FX, a trombonist with pick up mic through cheap digitech multiFX, guy playing 'weird' scales on some unknown moog synth, and 4 to 5 drummers) set up and soundchecked indefinitely. our set was augmented by a dying fire alarm beeping at regular intervals, a loud fan drone from the power amplifier for the speakers, the 'el' train out back, creaky floors and talking and coughing, and even a random drum or cymbal hit by a member of steltch getting bored or restless. despite ample battery power, my minidisc decided for some reason to stop recording after 25 minutes and 53 seconds. we continued to play for another 15-20 minutes after that but we think this recording is just enough. we left after the 1st or 2nd piece by steltch. (greg davis)
(leaf 003) greg davis & zach wallace - january 13th, 2004 in chicago, illinois
1. (3:36)
2. (9:53)
3. (7:17)
although we don't get to see or talk to each other that much, we maintain a close friendship. zach is one of those guys that you'll never not be friends with after becoming his friend. zach and i hadn't seen each other in at least a year. so, i convinced him to come out to chicago and visit before he headed back to school at bard and we resumed our busy lives. we did some record shopping. brewed up some homemade herbal tea, made some food (including kale and a coleslaw consisting of turnip, parsnip, daikon, and carrots), caught up on 'lost' time, listened to a bit of british folk music, and went to andy's musical instruments store. we managed to take some time to play and record some improvisations. zach brought along a few things he had gathered recently. some wonderful sounding thick leaves, branches with pods, an assortment of pinecones, and some stones. we recorded about 60 minutes worth of sounds. it seems that the best 3 tracks fit nicely onto a 3" cdr. track 1 is us playing motoric rhythms with bundles of shishkebab skewers on 2 different size large triangles. track 2 is sounds of water and stones (and maybe a few other objects). track 3 is a collection of shakers and rattles. zach and i hadn't played music together in at least 3 years, so it was very nice to join up in the moment where we are in our lives and make this recording. i hope i get to see zach again soon. (greg davis)
(leaf 004) jeph jerman - trees & shrubs - 2000
1. (29:39)
when i first moved to cottonwood in 1999, i spent a lot of time walking around with my recorder, sampling the sonic surroundings. i was surprised at the difference in sonority compared to seattle, where i previously lived. the dryness here lent everything a crispness and fragility that i had forgotten. i experimented a lot with contact mics and my stereo cassette recorder, spacing the mics far apart and attaching them to two (or more) things, mostly plants. these recordings are from my yard, and include a catclaw acacia and several other plants which i've forgotten now. the recorder i used would not allow me to monitor the recording as it happened (who designs these things?!?!?!), so i had to wait until it was over to hear it. i am often amazed at the wide array of sounds and timbres registered by these cheap devices. (jeph jerman)
(leaf 005) f.s. blumm - italian short story - 2002
1. rain on the tent (0:54)
2. rain in the sacristy (phase 1 and 2) (0:08)
3. going to the VW bus to drive to the mayor's place to buy tomatoes 'canto' (0:28)
4. driving back home after having bought tomatoes at the mayor's place (1:32)
5. squashing the tomatoes (0:14)
6. washing bottles for the tomato sauce (0:21)
7. chopping firewood (0:26)
8. breaking up firewood (0:35)
9. lighting the oven to cook the sauce (0:47)
10. chilling on the porch 'kitchen in the back' (1:14)
11. cricket in the night 'very close' (1:19)
In 2002, I moved with my family for half a year to Italy, close to the sea to a place in the countryside near Genoa. We tried to form a community together with a bunch of Italians. we were living in tents and some ancient ruins (there even was a little church on the area, actually the most proper building, which we mainly used for storing wood) We tried to build a strawbale house but it was raining so much in this year that we really almost swam away. our main hobby was getting the truck out of the mud (we invented a lot of amazing techinques like knotting the rope to the back-wheel and then to a tree to use the car as a wind, towing itself) unfortunately, the project failed and in the end we broke up, still it was a very, very nice experience. I never heard so much silence in my life. I never ate so many flowers. On these recordings you hear first of all, the rain, Then, after the sun came out, we made tomato sauce (eating was the second main hobby, I mean, we drank wine out of 15 gallon containers and bought tomatoes bucketwise, you know) So on this day, we drove to the mayor's private house to buy his tomatoes. we squashed the tomatoes. we washed bottles to store the tomato sauce. we lit the outside oven and cooked the sauce on it. In the end we had a nice spaghetti tomato sauce for ,well, a few days. We had a chill out hippy session on the porch (you can hear my 2 year old son Wenzel asking Stefano a mixture of 'Come stai?' (how are you?) and 'Cosa fai?' (what are you doing?)) The last track are crickets in the night. I think that this recording is especially amazing because it sounds like an electronic noise but it really is (as all the other recordings) a pure field recording with no editing done at all (just recorded from a very close distance) enjoy. (f.s. blumm)
(leaf 006) greg davis & corey fuller - two perspectives at two locations along the sumiyairi river in naguri-mura, saitama prefecture, japan - march 2nd, 2004
1. logs (12:50)
2. riverside (13:29)
My wife and I moved to Naguri 3 years ago to find a more humane pace of life than what we had found in Tokyo. Naguri is a small village of about 2600 people, located 2 hours outside of Tokyo, in a valley with a river running through it. The average age of the population is 65, and there are no supermarkets, convenience stores, shopping malls or even a train station, which is quite rare considering its proximity to Tokyo. Naguri is the sort of village where major local news consists of a wild boar being spotted crossing from the east side of the river to the west side, and wild monkeys coming down from the mountains to steal vegetables from disgruntled local farmers. Though it is no longer so, a couple hundred years ago, it was quite an affluent village, supported by a local logging industry. Giant cedars were cut down and sent floating down the Naguri river to Tokyo bay where they could be exported or sent to other parts of Japan. Some of the logs from Naguri have been used in the construction of famous temples across Japan. Small villages like Naguri are becoming more rare, though. The Japanese government is making efforts to eradicate all small villages by merging them with larger cities nearby. While this maybe have economic benefits for the village, it often comes at the expense of culture and local character as the small villages inevitably become commercialized and ‘modernized.’ Sadly, many old villages are fast disappearing just like much of the older population with its traditions and culture. On his recent Japan tour, Greg came out to stay with us for a few days in the country. He had mentioned before he arrived that he wanted to make some field recordings together. Greg had the idea of recording a piece together at the same location yet with two separate mics/recorders and with some distance between us. The idea was to capture two different perspectives on the same location and then to mix them together to create one unified piece. This idea was immensely appealing to me because, having spent most of my life in Japan as an American and Greg being from the States, this idea seemed a perfect embodiment of our friendship and time together in Naguri. The first piece consists of us playing large cedar logs with smaller logs, sticks, bark and other items lying around. Our mics were positioned at opposite ends of the pile of logs where we began by slowly walking toward each other until we crossed paths in the middle. Halfway through the piece we began to toss some of the smaller logs into the air on top of the larger ones, creating more unpredictable and uncontrolled rhythms. Each log had its own resonant pitch, and even contained different pitches within it, depending on where it was struck and how thick the circumference was. One particular log seemed to match the resonant frequency of the valley, as it would echo sharply off of the hillsides. The second piece was recorded at a quiet bend of the Sumiyairi river. We began by sitting and playing small river-rocks, leaves, twigs and water, but eventually ended up on our feet, playing larger branches and stones. At one point Greg grabbed a very large pile of branches (it looked like he had uprooted an entire tree) to add to the mix, which nearly made me fall into the river with laughter (I managed to suppress my laughter though for the sake of the recording). Although Greg and I had never improvised together before, there was a natural easiness and joy of creating together, as well as an immediate connection and mutual understanding. My hope is that Greg and I will have more opportunities in the future to play music together in all of the different geographical locations in which our paths cross. (corey fuller)
(leaf 007) keith fullerton whitman - birdsightings - may 28th, 2000
1. 52800 0136pm (1:43)
2. 52800 0307pm (2:02)
3. 52800 0310pm (0:13)
4. 52800 0335pm (6:41)
5. 52800 0432pm (0:58)
6. 52800 0439pm (3:04)
7. 52800 0512pm (0:13)
8. 52800 0544pm (6:21)
9. 52800 0553pm (4:27)
10. 52800 0625pm (4:09)
21 cedar street may 28 2000 one oktava mk319 microphone 4 inches from standard wild birds unlimited tube feeder one blue microphone cable through crack in window small mixer fed into old mathlab machine pro tools let run for 6 hours or so edited down "events" to 30 solid minutes birds sighted gray headed junco morning dove common grackle sparrow crow 300hz low-cut filter removed ancillary rumble close-up feeding and chatter remains in foreground slight traffic and environmental noise in the background no processing or augmentation otherwise then or now if cats are present please use speakers for their edification listen in comfortable surroundings all the best (keith fullerton whitman)
(leaf 008) sawako & asuna - aihara - april 20th & may 7th, 2004
1. ogawa, mori, hatake (13:13)
2. bird song 01 (3:06)
3. mori no naka (4:19)
4. suiro (5:15)
5. bird song 02 (1:44)
6. shamisen (0:40)
7. yokeijo (1:55)
Aihara is a town where asuna lives. In Aihara, there is a poultry farm, hills and woods, a baseball field for children, fields and soil, a small river, and a yummy ice cream shop. It takes about 1 and a half hours to get there from the center of Tokyo by train. These tracks were recorded by sawako (one afternoon when she visited Aihara) and asuna (one morning in the woods of Aihara) (sawako)
(leaf 009) ben owen - florida everglades - february 2004
1. (1:00)
2. (8:44)
3. (26:08)
4. (1:51)
these recordings were made in february 2004 on an overnight canoe trip into the back-country of the florida everglades. in 30+ knot winds my partner summer and I entered west lake in the north-western part of everglades national park which connects to several lakes, groves, and creeks, before reaching the 7.7 mile destination at Garfield Bight on the gulf coast. the first two recordings are from a contact mic submerged in water from the moving canoe. soundings happen as the contact mic brushes through sea vegetation and the changing water depth. the second two recordings were edited from a longer recording entering and exiting the grove between The Lungs and Alligator Creek. the low quality radio shak binaural microphones were placed inside the canoe. the vast expanse of groves that grow in the everglades are an amazing organic structure. the overhanging groves connect two land-masses stretching over to create a tunnelesque passageway that one would have to duck from low passing limbs, branches, vines, and spider-webs. the grove paths are kept just wide enough for one canoe to pass through. along the banks alligators rested in the sun, some in small groups, some with mouths propped open on a fallen tree, or with eyes gently floating above water watching us pass. the sound reflected here within the groves is the reflection from the hull of the canoe and the overhanging grove. (ben owen)
(leaf 010) shedding - hello st. louis!!! - may 28th, 2004
1. lapping stairs (11:44)
2. cobblestone wash (8:17)
3. concrete wash (16:43)
played in st. louis while on tour recently. the night of the show had intense storms, and flooding ensued as we headed from the radio station to the club. the next morning, after a breakfast fruit cup, we headed to the mighty st. louis arch, as sara p. had never been. instead of ascending the manmade wonder that i had visited so recently, i decided to enjoy the beautiful weather in the park, by the mississippi river, with bobby m. and joe s.; paul d. was napping in the van. i had my minidisc and mic with the intent to capture some sounds, but i was largely aimless, which often leads to the most fun times capturing moments. bobby m. suggested i record the river. how obvious and cliche i thought. as they headed back for the van, i walked down to the flooded waterway. soon, as a young boy and his grandmother departed nearby, i was lost in the hypnotic sounds of the river. i quickly realized i should record these moments of relaxation and quiet on an otherwise chaotic tour. if nothing more than as an audio memory of the refreshing morning of solitude and meditation. there are three separate tracks. first, the water lapping against a flooded stairwell, the slapping sound seeming so alien to my ears. the second track, the water washing over a flooded bank of cobblestones, the sounds falling somewhere in between the lapping stairs and the final track: the wash of water over a flooded slope of smooth concrete. (connor bell)
(leaf 011) jeph jerman & greg davis - memorial day - may 31st, 2004
1. (21:02)
another meeting with jeph in cottonwood arizona. this time a scorching hot day at the end of may. we decided to record outside in front of his house. one of the ideas in this improvisation is friction sounds. making sounds by scraping or rubbing or dragging objects along different surfaces. at the beginning it is branches and stalks along concrete. and at the end jeph and i in stereo coaxing resonant frequencies from the windows of his house with long walking sticks. this was our memorial day for sound and listening. (greg davis)
(leaf 012) jeph jerman - harvester ants - march 24th, 2001
1. (29:44)
ants walking and talking on contact microphones.... (jeph jerman)
(leaf 013) greg davis - wind and... - july 10th, 2004
cd1 - wind and paper (75:02)
cd2 - wind and bamboo (74:59)
on a warm and breezy day in chicago this summer, i was bored in my studio and contemplating music of the wind, so i decided to hang some things out of my window to see and hear how the wind would interact with certain objects. first, i attached 4 contact mics to 4 different sheets of paper and let those dangle out of my window. i recorded the sounds of these papers flapping and flying and scraping in the wind. second, i attached 4 contact mics to 4 different pieces of bamboo. i placed the pieces of bamboo close together to create a bamboo 'chime'. i recorded the sounds of the bamboo clinking together gently and quietly in the wind. all in all, a very pleasant summer's day. the length of the recordings are meant to suggest that these sounds could go on forever as long as there was some sort of wind and as long as the objects last. (greg davis)
(leaf 014) jon mueller - emerson hi fidelity - december 2004
1. 16 (11:57)
2. 78 (9:52)
3. 45 (8:57
recordings of jon's old turntable motor spinning at 16, 78 and 45 rpm. sounds like primitive pansonic or raster-noton.... (jon mueller)
(leaf 015) lawrence english - limnology - july & december 2004
1. glenelg (4:34)
2. dark water (3:50)
3. le lac (4:00)
4. snap, crackle, pop (1:36)
5. hydromys chrysogaster (3:20)
6. collecting clicks + chirps (7:30)
7. henley jetty (0:38)
Ever since I went diving at Talabudgerra Creek just south of the Gold Coastwhen on holidays with my family in my youth, I've had a curiosity about the sounds that exist below the surface of the water. I'd always hear this clicking and chirping whenever I went diving there - it sounded so unnatural, like the crackle of a record slowly spinning endlessly. This curiosity was ignited again in 2003 after diving on the Barrier Reef with a friend from New York - this time the crackling was almost deafening, and once I was back on the mainland I started researching again - the sound I could hear was fish communicating. It was amazing and within a few weeks I'd hunted out a hydrophone to facilitate collecting some of these sounds that had ignited my interest so long ago. After a week or so in New Zealand during July 2004 making recordings of a variety of marshes, lakes and creeks (which produced some nice results, although much of NZ's waterways are almost devoid of life), I attended a residency project in Adelaide. While I had a few days free I made my way to the Glenelg Pier to make some oceanic recordings. Needless to say I was just awe-struck once I put the hydrophone in the water - the sound was just so completely unnatural - snaps, crackles, pops, chirps, buzzes and all manner of other electronic sounding tones. I used some of these recordings as the basis for some radio work and then in December, I had some time free again to get back to recording and needless to say I was keen to do some more underwater work. So I headed out late at night to a number of waterholes, rivers and ponds around Brisbane. Apart from seeing a giant water rat, a fox chasing ducks in the moonlight and a range of other unusual activities that tend to reveal themselves the moment you sit down still and quiet in natural environments, I was fortunate to collect some wonderfully synthetic sounding underwater environments. Listening to these environments the unusual qualities of them truly amaze me - there's a whole other sound world existing just inches below the water's surface and these recordings document just a few of the moments going on unheard each day and night. (lawrence english)
(leaf 016) dallas simpson - a meditation for spring - may 23rd, 1998
1. a meditation for the Declaration of the Báb - lambley dumbles
near the village of lambley, nottinghamshire
daybreak
may 23rd 1998
(33:37) (edited)
Part of a series of pastoral recordings inspired by the Sacred Writings of the Bahá'í Faith. This work takes the form of a walk upstream at dawn along a beautiful, small, wooded, steep sided stream valley near the village of Lambley, Nottinghamshire, UK. There are a number of small wooded valleys in the area collectively called "the Dumbles". The walk upstream ends at a small hissing gushing waterfall and the journey described, recorded and performed on a Baha'i Holy Day, May 23rd - "The Declaration of the Báb", has deep spiritual significance, water being symbolic of the Divine Presence - "Refresh my heart, O my God, with the living waters of Thy love, and give me a draught, O my Master, from the chalice of Thy tender mercy," The Báb. (dallas simpson)
(leaf 017) ryan gregory & christine jeanine - 1123 morley ave. - july 15th, 2005
1. (37:39)
This is a document of our second time recording rain on our front porch. I walked out with the mic as the rain began to fall, late afternoon, raising the mic to hear the wooden sounds of our roof being battered. Meanwhile, Christine brought out plastic bags, a watering jug, and pots of different sizes, arranging them beneath the columns of dripping water falling from the awning's edge. The idea was to take the music generated by the falling rain and give it new voices by using commonplace objects from our human existence, but this edge was the primary mediation between us and the rain, breaking down the fallen water into individual rhythmic elements that are constantly in flux and in phase with each other. Listening back now, I'm amazed by the polyrhythms that emerged, but I'm also struck by the amount of completely singular sounds I hear; the thunder that begins just after the rain, after it had slowed down to a drizzle, began to pour; the brief appearance of bird song; the sound of the pots being knocked together as Christine rearranges them; my neighbor's FM radio. (ryan gregory)
(leaf 018) bill thompson - mcalpine construction site, footdee - july 20th, 2005
1. (12:25)
footdee is a small scottish fishing village off of the north sea. having just moved here a year ago from texas, it’s still a novel experience for me to walk my dog along the beach each night. the sonic landscape is vastly different from that of texas with its cicadas, crickets, frogs and the like. in footdee, or ‘fitee’ as the locals pronounce it, the most pervasive sound is that of wind and sea. you either notice the huge gusts and crashing waves, or you notice their absence on the occasional calm night. on this particular evening however, something remarkable was ringing out across the village. on the edge of the harbor, a new control tower is being constructed. as the wind was blowing through the structure and the various pipes of the scaffolding, it was causing them to resonate and literally ring out across the village. the sound carried by the wind was absolutely ethereal, and seemed to hang in the air. returning that night and dodging the lights of ships coming in and out of the harbor, i scaled the fence to make the recording from which this selection is taken. (bill thompson)
(leaf 019) scott smallwood - many voices - july 2005
1. rasping edge
2. dripping dry
3. between them
4. the frog
5. ruuuh
6. twittering
7. big train
8. passion
In the heat and humidity, I struggled to capture small sounds of many voices. I moved my microphone around to frame things: changes of angle, subtle movements towards and away, slowly dancing; trying to hear past the voices to the distant train, the highway, and fireworks. I tried to find little pockets and choruses of sound inside the lush, green vegetation. I listened for drops of water on leaves, lizards scurrying up branches, tree frogs, mosquitos, cicadas, crickets, and unidentified aliens. I heard the humming chords of the air conditioners, the planes overhead, the soda machines, adding their dark, long voices to the sonic tapestry of Florida. (scott smallwood)
(leaf 020) jonathan way - kalaloch / skagit - winter - spring 2004
Kalaloch:
1. Through coastal forest
2. Clear stream flecked with foam
North Jetty:
3. Seafoam
4. Ocean rain
Skagit:
5. Raindrops on Broadleaf Maple leaf
6. Skagit flow
i made this collection of recordings during a season i spent working and traveling in western washington. the field recordings are from three locations along the pacific coast and skagit river, at times in the form of "contact" recordings (using an ordinary microphone): textural distortion from seafoam scattered on a beach after a late winter storm; percussive rhythms from a large maple leaf sheltering the microphone from rainfall along the skagit towards the beginning of summer. (jonathan way)
(leaf 021) loving space kindergarten & corey fuller - nature's noises - october 24th 2005
1. sticks & stones & other stuff
2. sound party
3. a walk
4. chestnut thunder
Nineteen 5 year-olds exploring autumn through sound...each child collected a sound making object...sea shells, acorns, nuts, seeds, dried sunflowers, chestnuts, sea water, rain water, apples, autumn leaves, sticks, stones, bones, branches, sea weeds, grasses etc....later they sat in a large semi-circle and collectively explored the sounds of autumn they had gathered...i love that you can hear the smallness of their hands as they intuitively explore these sounds...recorded with a pair of AKG C414 mics...low frequency traffic rumble filtered out... (corey fuller)
(leaf 022) lawrence english - suikinkutsu - december 2005
1. plink
2. slowly turns blue
3. shimmering black hawk
4. bamboo shinjuku
5. two points pouring
6. raven songs
7. taima bells
8. chamber
9. sitting on the very edge
I owe a great debt of thanks to David Toop, who introduced me to the existence of the Suikinkutsu through his wonderful text Haunted Weather. The Suikinkutsu, or Japanese Water Koto as it is sometimes known, is in my opinion one of the most beautifully executed sound installations - not only is the acoustic quality of the piece amazingly refined and engaging, but its placement within and relationship between environment, traditional belief and mythology. The Suikinkutsu is essentially a hollowed out cavern in the soil, through which water drips via small holes at the top of the cavern. As the drips hit the surface of the water within the cavern, the resulting sound is amplified and effectively filtered, creating a resonate tone that fluctuates depending on the frequency and size of water droplets creating an impressively melodic array of sounds. These recordings collected here were made at three locations in Japan during my tour there in December and January 2005/6. My thanks must be extended to Kazuyuki Kishino, Yudai + Ai Yamamoto, Kanshu-san and my wife Rebecca, who all assisted me greatly in making these recordings. For me, the Suikinkutsu (best represented on this disc by the recordings made at Taima-Dera, also one of the most beautiful gardens I have encountered in Japan) generates a reflection of one aspect of Japan's cultural sensibility - a timelessly refined sense of aesthetics and an innate understanding of spatial composition that seamlessly aligns the Suikinkutsu within a cultivated natural (or as increasingly is the case, urban) setting. (lawrence english)
(leaf 023) marcel türkowsky - usedom - august 13th 2002
1. inside the train to usedom
2. just arrived
3. the station hall
4. thursty, in the station market
5. knackel part 1
6. surrounded by nice things at a small market
7. three ravens and their ideas
8. knackel part 2
9. wind micro feedback
10. close to a small lake and a boat trying to leave
11. a boat still trying to leave and my whistling
12. storm and stress
13. die see
14. sprinkler
15. wood behind ?
16. tiny falling
17. crickets singing the bon nuit
One strong experience i remember from my past is to have been a trackrunner for five years in an eastgerman sportsclub in berlin. My discipline was 800m track. Two times a year i went with a sportsteam to the island usedom in the baltic sea, close to the polish border. It is the sunrichest island in germany and known for its curing climate. So we would always go there to be part of a big training camp. We trained everyday doing a bunch of different exercises, gymnastics, systematical run, running through the country side, along the beach, swimming in the sea, playing ballgames and even in the evening we would play strategy games. Never really having a resting time just during the sleep. I stopped to be a member when i was 13 and started to play the bass. One year before, my father gave me a small stereo microphone to record like he said "trees and animals or your brother and you playing the acoustic guitar and so many other things". I never used it. Years later i finally started doing fieldrecordings/soundpictures as an alternative to fotographs to be able to imagine the memoriy of a space differentely. Whenever i made a trip i searched for a wildlife into areas were musical abstraction and identifiable sound can freely interact. Finally i remembered the island usedom and decided to go there again. I took this particular quite rusty small stereomicrophon, my recorder, tapes, some memories, "conference pour les oiseaux" a really nice collection of interviews with john cage, a sleeping back and swimmingshorts. The time there felt like i am again this young trackrunner boy just with a different mission - to listen. I recorded during one day and a bit of the night. Sometimes i interacted with concrete actions in the space like whistling, moving strange or touching the microphon and performed rolling tiny stones into the water in front of crickets singing the bon nuit. (Marcel Türkowsky)
(leaf 024) greg davis - winooski river canoe trip - july 24th 2005
1. (51:16) - time lapse edit
this recording was taken last summer on a canoe trip down the winooski river in burlington, vermont. i went on the trip with my good friends mike and ben. we dropped the canoe in at the winooski salmon hole and travelled down the river many miles almost to the mouth of the river where it empties out into lake champlain. i recorded about 2 hours worth of the trip with my soundman binaural microphones and my edirol R1. sounds along the way include kingfishers, irrigation pumps for the intervale farms, airplanes, paddling water, cows cooling off in the water and swatting flies with their tails, the sound of my skin getting terribly sunburned and me eating the best potato chips in the world. i edited out all of the talking in the recording and was left with 51 minutes of other sounds. thanks to mike and ben for the beautiful summer journey, lets do it again. and thanks to david at homophoni for putting up with my back and forthness regarding this recording. listening to this recording with some nice headphones is highly encouraged. (greg davis)
(leaf 025) jen boyd - 8 trees - spring 2006
1. grey (10:27)
2. palm (14:25)
3. eucalyptus (12:44)
4. pine (7:24)
5. sway (2:58)
6. rocky tree (10:03)
7. rain blossom (7:25)
8. hollow branch (4:13(
These are recordings of trees I made around Southern California in the Spring of 2006 and most were done at the Los Angeles Arboretum on a single afternoon. I went to the arboretum several times that spring, drawn by the surreality of the setting and the chance to wander off and get lost in a stand of trees with no two quite alike. The Arboretum tracks here are from the eucalyptus forest and several different palm trees. There's also a recording made on a rainy day in the hills behind my old house in Castaic and a recording of a tree in the San Gabriel Mountains. Every time I record a new tree I am captivated with all of the different textures it creates. No two trees sound the same. (jen boyd)
(leaf 026) matthew mullane - sound-shapes from rural ohio - september 2005 - may 2006
1. field station at dusk (4:00)
2. bog (3:57)
3. sunday, march 26 6:30am (5:52)
4. silver creek farm (2:24)
5. eldon-russel (5:58)
6. mosquito lake from a jetty (13:13)
The majority of these recordings, aside from the concluding piece, serve as minor aural landmarks to the small town, or rather village, as it is still called, of Hiram, Ohio. With its topography varying as much as its weather patterns; the village and its outlying landscape consisting of checkered farmland, rivers, and dense forest areas oozes with sonic opportunity. Winged creatures, both insect and avian, seem to thrive here; they often culminate in huge displays (or perhaps protests) following one of the aforementioned weather shifts. The opening recording is of such a shift, as Spring refused to do so, and Winter mercilessly harassed animals of all sorts. And similarly, "Bog", recorded a mere thirteen days later, documents a large group of various insects, frogs and birds all gathered around to be heard following a sudden and very violent thunderstorm. Yet, there are tranquil moments as well, as the chickens will tell you. The closing recording is not in Hiram, but Cortland, some 30 minutes East, where boats and geese travel on a large man-made lake, and where I sat on a small rock jetty recording them all. (matthew mullane)
(leaf 027) jeph jerman & greg davis - australia - july 16th & 18th 2006
1. arts house, melbourne (21:03)
2. 1/4 inch, wollongong (22:53)
these are 2 different sets from my recent tour of australia / new zealand with jeph. the first set is from melbourne at the arts house. this concert was part of the liquid architecture 7 festival. jeph and i had a large collection of items set up on a big table. many of the objects we collected around australia during our trip. for this show jeph and i each had 2 microphones panned left and right to work with. we were able to pan sounds manually by moving them under the mics in different ways and directions. a nice quiet focused performance. the second set is from wollongong at the university theatre which is called the 1/4 inch for shows i think. this was one of the last shows of our tour so jeph and i were a bit road weary at that point. we set up on the floor with a couple of mics for amplifictation. this recording is from my stereo mic on the floor in front of us. the set starts with the sound of rain falling on the roof of the building. another nice quiet set using natural objects and things. (greg davis)
(leaf 028) jeph jerman & greg davis - new zealand - july 10th & 11th 2006
1. matinee, new plymouth (24:45)
2. artspace, auckland (21:07)
two sets from my recent tour of australia / new zealand with jeph. the first set is from new plymouth at matinee. matinee was a posh dance type of club with a nice bar and loungey atmosphere to it. we were billed as 3 international sound art DJs. we were told that we need to fill 3 hours worth of music for the night. jeph and i and lawrence went down to the beach in new plymouth and gathered a trunk full of driftwood. for this performance, jeph and i set up on the floor of the lounge near the stage and both played driftwood for 25 minutes. its a continuous active texture. it was quite a work out and jeph and i were both sweating by the end of the set. the locals were baffled but one young surfer connected to it on a natural / maori level i think. a strange but memorable night. the second set is from artspace in auckland. a lovely gallery and nice sounding room. jeph and i played acoustically in the space with our range of natural objects collected in new zealand. (greg davis)
if you are interested in submitting some field recordings for the series, please contact gregorytylerdavis at gmail dot com