Chris Watson, besides being an early founding member of both Cabaret Voltaire and The Hafler Trio is now most prominent in the area of field recording of wildlife and natural phenomena. His recordings for the Touch label utilising field recordings to create a descriptive audio landscapes evoking place and incorporates spatial sound technology. One notable recording was ‘Star Switch On’, a collaboration with Mika Vainio of Pan Sonic, Phillip Jeck, Hazard, Fennesz, AER and Biosphere. He has been involved in numerous radio, television and film as a freelance recordist specialising in wildlife sounds, habitats and atmospheres. Any cursory examination of his work will reveal a deep understanding of sound, nature and technology and the nexus between these three focal frames.
The first track of this two track release is ‘Midnight at the Oasis’, a condensed examination of sunset to sunrise in South Africa’s Kalahari desert. The insistent presence of high tone insects holds the ears awareness for these frequencies and dominate the scape as the play life from the winds, the brush, animals to the bird calls which fill the rest of the frequency range. The feat of condensing this dusk to dawn world into a solid 28 minute recording is a feat in itself and its focus on individual voices of insects, birds or animals highlights the Watson’s recording artistry while he holds the portrait together by the constant sound of insects which vary in pitch, frequency, pattern and modulation but remain a dominant presence. It specifically invoking sound appreciation, the distinction and clarity of each sound is displayed and the ability to maintain the sharpness in the mix is a highlight for audiophiles. For it is very much a track of sonic pleasure, it delights in the natural world and how well it can sample and replicate a portrait in miniature of a rich and abundant world.
‘The Bee Symphony’ is a collaboration with Marcus Davidson fellow Touch artist in his work as a member of Spire, an organ based project. The title of the album refers both to the subject matter and the nature of artistic collaboration, with a touch of linguistic pun and moving beyond such matters to the composition of the tones of the bees. They have been recorded in and around their hives in an English country garden The composition of the recordings is very much in the form of a choral work peppered with free form field recordings and rendered in a 4:1 surround sound system by Chris Watson. It mimics the reverence of tabernacle choristers and constructs a nature choral from the sounds of the bees. Marcus Davidson notes “The first thing that struck me about the bees was how tuneful they were. During the day, their pitch was always based around A an octave below 440, the note we tune orchestras to. I found that the bees formed chords around the A, which varied depending on their mood. I spent time notating these bee chords, or note clusters, and as the bees sing easily in the human vocal range, I then scored the actual bee music for choir.†The presence of choral voices augmenting the project is sometimes strange given the material and field recordings of the bees but perhaps speaks more towards the idea of cross pollination between the artificial divides of the natural and human spheres. It also holds for ideas of the hive mind, of collective thought and action that may drawn between communities of insects and groupings of humans around collective concerns. Conceptually it holds within the concerns of early music, field recording and technological developments in sound. It is clearly a highly composed work whose appreciation depends on both an ear open to the reception of classical music and not averse to experimentation or the technology of sound.
Innerversitysound.
