Field Recordings

“Every 4th of July in my neighborhood, there is an hours-long competition to see which corner can launch the most illegal fireworks. It gets quite intense, and I recorded it this year with binaural mics. I guess this is the diametric opposite to the stereotypical field recording of a quiet rural meadow–but I thought I’d submit it, in case it catches your interest.”

“Via Balilla is a small street in Rome where people gather together once a year to celebrate the local community. Back in the days the street was famous for containing within it, apparently, several conflicting living realities. It all started in 1993 when the inhabitants decided to meet and get to know each other better. Everyone brought what they could; chairs and tables, typical food and drinks, music and games. Since then the community has grown and has become an example of civil coexistence. The annual festival is there to remind us the power of a good inclusive community.” www.immersedinsounds.wordpress.com

“About 20 drummers and hundreds of festival goers gathered around the fire at the centre of the stone circle and played throughout the night. This recording was made at 4am just before the sunrise.”

“at a friend’s cottage on lake michigan. it was early evening & i wanted to capture the sounds of water breaking on the shore, and of our kids playing—singing to themselves—nearby.”

“Here are some Dutch bells from last week. I was cycling from Amsterdam to Lille and stayed overnight in Gouda where I went to the market square just before 11pm and caught the carillon of the church of St John, with a background of people drinking in the cafes and, near the end, a passing cyclist. Best listened to with headphones as it is a binaural recording.”

“I was in Greece last week, on my first full day there I was on an early morning walk when I started to hear this distant sound of bells but couldn’t see where it was coming from. Then out of nowhere, I started to see so many mountain goats with bells around their necks. It felt really quite magical, and such a beautiful sound.”

“Thousands of protestors gather outside the Royal Courts of Justice to call for the decriminalisation of abortion. Abortion in England and Wales still falls under criminal law in 2023 – specifically the 1861 Offences Against the Person Act. 67 people have faced legal prosecutions in the past decade alone. A few days before this protest happened, Carla Foster was sentenced to more than two years in prison for procuring drugs to induce an abortion after the legal limit. Outside the Royal Courts of Justice, one anti-abortion protestor stands on a small ladder next to the crowd, shouting through a megaphone. As the thousands of protestors begin to move through the afternoon heat, onlookers cheer, stare and film on their phones, with occasional cars honking their horns in solidarity.”

“I was having an afternoon dose on Monday when the stormy weather rolled in around South London. My room is situated within a block of flats, and the courtyard reflects all outside sounds into a reverberant soundscape. I like to keep my windows open and let in all the sounds from outside. I thought this storm would make for a good recording whilst I doze. Persistent rain and rippling rumbles are so comforting when you’re nestled indoors.”

“12.06.2023. Caught in a thunderstorm on a hot London day in Abney Park cemetery. A passer by on her mobile phone remarks ‘not soaked, soaked…'” 

“The history of the Wolzenalp chairlift, in eastern Switzerland, goes back over 50 years. It was built in 1965. The slow journey from the valley to the mountain takes a good 20 minutes over meadows, trees and 400 meters in altitude. We had to take the chairlift to get to a moor where we did some recordings for our botany podcast.”

“Icebergs break off the Breiðamerkurjökull glacier and drift through the water into the Atlantic Ocean, some of them glowing a surreal, bright blue – others vast and blackened like old ships. Small pieces of ice wash onto the shore of the black sand beach, tiny glass sculptures alongside the smooth water-worn pebbles. This lagoon started forming in 1934 when the glacier began to retreat and has increased fourfold since the early 1970s as the speed of melting has increased.”

“More than 300 marble columns create a space that could hold 80,000 cubic metres of water. The space hums with constant reverberations from the slightest sounds.  I stood at the very back corner of the cistern and recorded while the last few visitors made their way round the rattling gangways.”

“I made this tiny recording of bees in Gros Morne National Park on the west coast of Newfoundland. It was August, 2022, peak summer, and the big bees were zooming in and out of the clover and a patch of fireweed and other tall wildflowers at the edge of our campsite. Also heard: a bird call, footsteps, the voice of a four year old, and the Park Ranger’s truck.”

“I’ve been walking past this music college on the way to work for nearly fifteen years. Each year, as the weather gets warmer, the musicians open the windows of their practice rooms and the sounds of jazz bands, opera singers and soloists pour out into the sunshine – interweaving with lawnmowers, helicopters and the sound of the water alongside.”

www.charitybe.media

“I was at the Jack in the Green procession in Hastings Old Town earlier today and managed to get a quick recording of the various players (in wonderful garbs) drifting in and out as they marched.”

“At the bustling Chesterfield flea market, I was immersed in the vibrant sounds of a funfair. This popular weekly market is one of the largest in the UK.” Photo: David Dixon

Two minutes before the testing of the emergency alert system. photo: Oxford Circus tube station building, London by Eluveitie

“I was waiting to meet a friend and there were at least two woodpeckers in the trees in the park. I couldn’t see them, but I could hear them really clearly.”

“This is a short snippet of an afternoon in a traditional coffeehouse in Vienna, Austria in March 2023. Vienna is famous for its coffeehouse history, this coffeehouse being over 100 years old. Young and old, residents and tourists alike spend long afternoons here, chatting, reading the newspaper, eating Apfelstrudel and trying their way through their many coffee specialties. When you’re in luck, as we were, there could be a piano and violin duo playing which you can hear alongside the chatter of guests, clanking of silver spoons on dishes, and the formally-dressed waiters taking orders in the background.”

“On Saturday 15 April, a pigeon showcased it’s cinephile credentials by joining a packed audience in the BFI Southbank’s biggest auditorium (NFT 1) for a screening of Mervyn LeRoy’s classic movie, Gold Diggers of 1933. The pigeon did not have a ticket however and before the film started, the team at the venue diligently attempted to liberate the bird from the cinema screen. After 30 minutes of various approaches it was decided that actually it could stay and watch the film.  Thankfully it was freed later in the day and has been telling the other pigeons of London about the virtues of the big screen experience.  This recording was taken in the audience, before the film was started, whilst venue staff tried to coax the pigeon towards a fire escape. It starts just as they decided it might be worth playing some cat sounds into the PA system.  Sam Clements & Louise Owen, makers of the 90 Minutes Or Less Film Fest Podcast.”

“Made on the tidal beach on the river Thames watching people mudlarking just under Waterloo bridge… trains pulling into Waterloo station above and simultaneously waves lapping below… Towards the end you hear a mudlarker say ‘uh oh a shoe, you get a lot of single shoes around here!'”  

“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 might hear boats, traffic on the bridge, a few birds, the pier, wind and waves.” Listen on Soundcloud

“Hundreds of people gather to demonstrate outside the Houses of Parliament whilst MPs hold the second reading of the ‘Illegal Migration Bill’, a piece of legislation that denies asylum to anyone risking their lives to cross the Channel in ‘small boats’. The government has itself admitted that the legislation might breach the European convention on human rights and the UN has said it’s a ‘clear breach’ of the refugee convention. At its second reading the bill was passed 311 to 251. 307 of the votes for the bill came from the Conservative party.”

“Myself and my co-editor (at The Sonification) went to cover a story about a mining company that has permits to start an open pit project in a rural area about 150km north of Bergen, with all the waste rock and process chemicals to be deposited in the nearby fjord—which also happens to be a pristine National Salmon Fjord. To a lot of local people we met, the fjord is a major food source, a place to relax and fish with family, and beyond that, an identity and a way of life. The story of the mining project is incredibly complicated and goes back a long way, but it’s a source of immense bitterness and sadness to many. The underwater recording is from a hydrophone at 5 metres’ depth, with some mysterious scrapes and gurgles that could be from marine life, of which there’s a lot… There’s also some drilling sounds, which probably come from the construction and tunnelling work at the mine, although I can’t be sure.” 

“A soundscape recorded on December 27, 2022 at around 10 a.m. in Bacău. It immortalises ‘Alaiul datinilor’ 56th edition, a special day when people from all over the Moldova region come to the city of Bacău to show off their own traditions, songs and dances. Everyone is wearing a costume with different kind of masks and is making a different kind of noise. The result is an explosion of colours and sounds all over the city.”

“I was fascinated by these sounding stairs on the entrance / exit of a park in Kaunas, Lithuania. I heard the sound from afar, and thought it was in my head until I came closer…”

“I was way up in a crows nest style ‘box’ at the back of the mezzanine in the Princess Theatre for Aldous Harding’s concert. I recorded the crowd trying to lure her back for an encore after a brilliant set.”

“A really windy night in the days just before Halloween swept what was left from the old silver maple trees in the neighbourhood. As the final few fell to earth, gusts swept them up into piles and down the road. That sound of chasing leaves always reminds me that winter here is just around the corner.”

“I went to Brianna Ghey’s vigil last night outside the Department of Education. It was a very emotional and affecting time, with people standing together holding candles and lighters, whilst chanting Brianna Ghey’s name. We are in the midst of what feels like a suffocatingly transphobic time, but to stand united in love and solidarity for our trans and non-binary siblings felt powerful. I recorded the one minute silence that was held at 7pm, after which we all collectively chanted her name. The silence that hangs in the air after fizzes with anger, power, love and hope. It was heartbreaking and breathtaking.”

“Plymouth Nighttime — Recorded August 31, 2022 in Plymouth, MA. We were staying at a house on a bluff overlooking Cape Cod Bay. At night you could see the lights of Pronvincetown across the water. Recorded with binaural mics / Zoom H1n on the deck of the house, facing east.”

“On January 7th I went to an unusual Orthodox Christmas service at the Catholic Church of St. Johns in Vilnius where the service was led by a chaplain father Heorhiy Kovalenko visiting from the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in Kyjiv.  The service was organized by the Lithuanian Orthodox priests who left Moscow Patriarchate and are now serving Ukrainian refugees and other members of the Orthodox community in Lithuania who do not want to pray in the churches of Moscow Patriarchate. This was a very moving bilingual service, where father Heorhiy Kovalenko was praying in Ukrainian for all those displaced by the war and those helping them, and the carol singers (if this is a correct term) were answering in both Ukrainian and Lithuanian.”

“The February full moon had just come up and I was on a stunning Saturday afternoon walk around sunset, the sky was a beautiful red. I stopped by the Tammisalo canal for a few minutes which was still frozen but beginning to thaw very loudly.”

“It gets really dark in Eskdalemuir. In winter it is sometimes so dark and foggy that you can literally see nothing. Once or twice a winter I step out my back door and can hear the sound of geese flying and honking directly over head. They feel really close. This can last for hours and is wonderfully creepy as you can never actually see the geese. We call this Goose Night.”

“Walking down the street and a shitload of crows tipped up. #crowzone”

“We had walked into Peterborough Cathedral at lunchtime on 24th October 2022 and it took us a while to work out that the sound we were listening to was two people tuning the organ.”

“Geese pad softly over the top of a snowy hill (while I walk heavy-footed behind them).”

A slow weave of some of the past year’s Field Recordings, from a clock repair shop in January to snow falling in December. Clock repair shop, London, UK on Saturday 22nd January 2022 at 11am – by Andrew Strangeway “I work in a clock shop in London where we service antique and vintage clocks. This is recorded from my bench on a quiet Saturday morning, there are sounds of repair work and of the various clocks ticking and striking eleven.” Trumpeter Swans, Sauvie Island Wildlife Area Portland, Oregon, USA on 28th January 2022 – by Jason Hovatter Transmission Tower, Portland, Oregon, USA on 8th February 2022 – by Jason Hovatter The bells at St Michael’s Golden-Domed Monastery, Kyiv, Ukraine on Sunday 13th February 2022 at 4.43pm – by Barny Smith Ironbark Gorge, Victoria, Australia in the early morning on Sunday 20th February 2022 – by Anouk and Camilla Hannan “Recorded down the coast at a place called Ironbark Gorge early on a sunny Sunday in February this year. Lots of tall eucalypts and tree ferns and sweet tiny finches. Anouk has started taking an interest in recording so she came out with me.” Woodpeckers by the water, Buckinghamshire, England, in March 2022 – by Paul Ridout “It’s worth listening for the birds hammering on different instruments.” Night train, Vedia, Buenos Aires Province, Argentina in April 2022 – by Joaquín Conde “The sound of a distant night train reaches out to us over the barking dogs and the wind chimes at my parents’ house” In the gloaming, Eskdalemuir, Scotland on 19th April 2022 – by Geoff McQueen “Lambs and their mothers. Pheasants shouting and roosting. Other, nicer sounding birds, doing their things. The steady sound of the river at the bottom of the valley. An annoying aeroplane. A peacock!” Creaky trees at Rannoch Moor, Scottish Highlands, Scotland on 23rd April 2022 – by Steve Urquhart “I recorded this at dawn, at the edge of a vast forest on the north-west bank of Loch Laidon…the fluctuating wind, swaying a couple of the many thousands of huge pine trees.” Stream in a forest glade, Ambleside, Cumbria, UK in April 2022 – by Geoff Marsh “…a lovely little glade in the forests above Ambleside, which was covered in bluebells, and loads of pesky bumblebees feeding off them.” Rain on the sea, Camber Sands, East Sussex, UK on 23rd May 2022 – by Sam Clements and Louise Owen “Was hoping to go for a morning swim in the sea, but was so cold the best we could manage was paddle in the shallows under an umbrella.” Parsley frogs at night, Lérouville, Lorraine, France on 5th June 2022 – by Colin Hunter “The location was an old disused quarry just outside Lérouville and knowing the toads begin calling after dusk, I arrived early to have time to scope out the location… I captured this recording much later that night, just after midnight, once the birds had fallen silent.” Lake swim at sunrise, the morning after midsummer, Groß Köris, Germany in June 2022 – by Eleanor McDowall “Swam out to watch the sun come up across the water. Bats overhead and roosters crowing in the distance.” Fort Greene Park, Brooklyn, NY, USA in June 2022 – by JT Green “Quite an electric afternoon for being in the middle of the week. I went there after seeing Everything Everywhere All At Once, and decided to capture some tape while contemplating my existence.” Bells on sheep, east of Rome around 7pm on 26th June – by Cosmin Sandu “I love the randomness they produce and the contrast with the surround and distant car traffic…” Pondweed bubbles, Raglan Castle moat, Wales, UK in the afternoon on 16th July 2022 – by Paul Ridout “It was a blazingly hot afternoon and the sunshine on the pondweed in the moat was generating bubbles that were popping all around…” Sitting in the dark, by the fan, reading and writing emails, London, UK on 19th July 2022 – by Siddharth Khajuria 8pm, rural village garden, Suffolk, UK on 19th July 2022 – by Melissa Harrison “4 mins of a rural village garden, 29.7 degrees at gone 8pm on the day we broke 40, in the UK’s most water-stressed and lowest-rainfall region, featuring a greenfinch, collared doves, sparrows, swifts, a silent blackbird (they’ve just stopped singing in the last week) and a very persistent wasp.” Takapou Bay, South Island, New Zealand in August 2022 – by Martin Zaltz Austwick Katydids in the moonlight, Bearsville, New York, USA on 20th August 2022 – by Joe Dobkin “I was sitting outside listening to the katydids and the moon.” Cow chorus in the middle of the road, near Te Kao, New Zealand on 30th August 2022 – by Helen Zaltzman Thunderstorm through skylight, London, UK at 11.20pm on 5th September 2022 – by Eleanor McDowall Muffled Bells, Cuddington, Buckinghamshire, UK on 19th September 2022 – by Paul Ridout “As a republican I probably shouldn’t have enjoyed this as much as I did – the bells in the village church were being rung this morning with muffled clappers so every other peak was soft.” Bi