Field Recordings

“Busker playing something slowish on guitar, while two old men rocked out to their own huge speaker that they’d wheeled in…”

“I recorded this snippet from the window of my room as I was lying in bed and listening to the Organ being played in the church next door and people walking by.”

“A concrete structure built 100 years ago to detect the sound of aircraft flying over the channel. Did it work? No! But it still stands despite this, and despite the years and the weather since (today: 30mph winds).”

“Five minutes out of the wind while walking along the Kent coastline.”

“Captured from the bridge above the station. You can hear trains passing by, coming into the station and going out, as well as people coming and going. A small, busy station full of London life.”

‘Hold On’ was written by Heidi Wilson, in the wake of a tragedy in Walden, Vermont six years ago. In 2026, people have begun to sing this song in cities around the world, most poignantly in Minneapolis – as groups began singing in the face of ICE’s devastating presence. This recording was made by Will Coley at a Resistance Sing In in New York, a collaboration between Resistance Revival Chorus and Singing Resistance NY. Photo by Ginny Suss / Instagram. Listen to Erica Heilman’s Rumble Strip podcast – https://www.rumblestripvermont.com/episodes/hold-on – to learn more about how this song found its way from a bonfire in a local high school parking lot to resistance choirs in cities around the world. Learn more about Heidi Wilson’s work here – https://www.heidiannwilson.com/ The ‘Hold On’ episode of Rumble Strip was part of Transom’s Listener’s project https://transom.org/the-listeners/

“At the New York City Resistance Sing In on March 19, activists from several groups shared and taught protest songs to a packed Riverside Church. Claire from Singing Resistance Minneapolis brought this song that was written to encourage ICE agents ‘to walk away from the path of violence and take accountability for harm they’ve caused.'”

“ere’s a field recording of a scrap metal man who comes round my village; Bream, The Forest of Dean, Gloucestershire, UK. I had been trying to catch his call for months, and when he drove up my lane I only had my phone at hand. It was recorded in the summer of 2025. You can hear his call as he passed my house, then the chatter of sparrows and the hum of bees, and finally his call from a distance.”

“It was a sunny but windy day, with the wind constantly picking up and stopping. The fence kept moving with the wind and banging, along some creaky garden decorations.”

“The intermittent field recordings series of hedges filled to the brim with birds continues… This is the sound of a mobile phone held inside a hedge that was singing.”

“For the past month I keep being woken up around 4am by (what I think is) an exuberant blackbird. Finding myself awake in the early hours, I’ve been reading about their nighttime singing on birdforum.net (which is honestly delightful). As the seasons change and the light shifts, apparently they can often be heard doing ‘midnight serenades’. Two nights ago I had my recording equipment out for an interview the next day, so when I woke up I went and stood in my flat’s stairwell, listening to the singing in my pyjamas and a big coat.”

“At the beginning of the year the ponds in the park near where we live froze over. One morning we took a hydrophone to a shallow, frozen reflecting pool – pushing the microphone through a hole in the ice. You can hear tinkling fragments, squeaky creaks and the sound of us taking turns to throw large blocks of ice across the frozen surface. Next to us a little boy was having fun smashing a tree branch into the pool, so we gave him the headphones and told him to make a bit of chaos…”