Field Recordings

“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...

“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...

“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...

“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...

“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...

“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 explosi...

“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 po...

“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 memb...

“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).”