Not sure if this cybernetic aviary contains real bird vocalisms processed and treated, or if they are simulations - but it's pretty magical stuff from Dougie from Down Under
First heard this on the Creel Pone rerelease of
Or was it actually on this, as sorted out by a pal in Aussieland?
My favorite avant-bird work ever, though, remains this
from this little beaut of a cassette, which I'd dearly like to have and hold
audio of the full thing plus bonus recordings buyable here as download
also as a CD here
New on Room40, A Field Guide To Phantasmic Birds, by Kate Carr
https://room40.bandcamp.com/album/a-field-guide-to-phantasmic-birds
Release rationale:
A note from Kate Carr
All the birds I never recorded, and some I did.
Re-imagined. Stretched and stuttering, glitching and morphing, swirling and sputtering.
Artifact and performance, digital bits all.
I imagine them swooping and calling in these scaffolds of sound I have made for them.
Gleaming amid technicolour jungles. Alive, unassailable; in a world we haven't ruined.
In a field recording I never made.
Further reading: a piece at the Quietus by Daryl Worthington connecting Kate Carr and the other recent release Synthetic Bird Music (as previously covered in this avian-garde music series) to a larger continuum of "beak music" and bird-inspired composers
Reminded me of this Sarah Angliss piece "A Wren in the Cathedral"
"Another prominent color in Angliss’s palette comes from the theremin. Although Angliss deploys the “classic” theremin sound—keening and ethereal—she’s also devised a way of getting the machine to modulate bird-song samples. That trick pops up several times on Ealing Feeder, most notably on “A Wren in the Cathedral,” where the name of seventeenth-century architect Sir Christopher Wren is amusingly literalized as the liquid chirrup of that same bird, famous for its complex and piercing song."
https://mappa.bandcamp.com/album/synthetic-bird-music - a compilation of artificially concocted bird song.
Particularly enjoyed this titular effort from Andrew Pekler
release rationale
When you listen to birds, they usually talk about food, sex/family, or anxiety. If they knew about the true nature of humanity's cruel and exploitative relationship with birds, they would be discussing rebellion. Humanity's current trajectory about birds is to cause the extinction of one-third of all bird species by the end of this century.
This record crystallises the borders between memory, beauty, and anxiety. At the core is an amalgam of all the birds we have met and heard, their sounds synthesised from a blend of memories. Esthetically it simulates the qualities of bird sounds, hitting similar frequential sweet spots. There is a great variety of birds captured here, from high to low frequencies, from solo voices to groups, from birds standing on their own to complex world-building, where the bird voices are part of an ecosystem, becoming one of the instruments.
You could stop there, enjoying this record on a musical level, but it invites us to do one step further, to consider reconfiguring our relationship with the Earth and its inhabitants. To question our impact, and to ask why we need synthetic bird music. Is it just a visionary endeavour or is it because we are failing at fostering a world in which organic birds and other creatures can thrive?
32 artists from the whole world, including our favourite artists from Eastern Europe, have contributed to this compilation both with new and previously released music. Their music is ordered from dawn to dusk and into the night. For many of the artists it's their first time on mappa, but some have previously released an album with us.
🕊🕊🕊
Profits from the record will be donated to the SOS/BirdLife Slovakia, organisation protecting the bird biotops by river Ipeľ, in south of Slovakia, where mappa has been formed.
www.vtaky.sk
One of the retrospective embarrassments I have with Rip It Up and Start Again is The Embarrassment - the non-appearance of the Kansas (pos...
