In 2020, we reviewed Pablo Diserens’ on australian shores, recorded just before the Australian fires that ravaged the continent and depleted it of irreplaceable ecosystems.  In 2022, Australian Bird Calls: Songs of Disappearance topped sales charts in its native land and became a bright spot in news stories around the world.  In 2024, Ian Andrews‘ Dawn chorus, before the fires dives into the same territory with a gorgeously melded pair of recordings from 2010, preceding not only Australia’s Black Summer Fires of 2019-20, but the bushfires of 2012. The value of this recordin ..read more

What a beautiful, magical recording, washing up on our shores after spending six years in the tumultuous ocean, tossed here and about, a message in a bottle, a bottle containing the sound of the sea.  Drift is a film in which nothing seems to happen, or everything happens, depending on one’s perspective; there’s a narrative framework, but within Helena Wittman’s frame all is water, imagination and dream.  Holding the vessel together is Nina Son‘s score, which is her own score, her own music, but also the ebb and flow of the waves, the gurgling and lapping, imitated by light elec ..read more

Manja Ristić is best known for her hydrophone recordings in and around the island of Korčula, and her resulting concern for the effect of noise pollution on local environments.  In a pair of new albums, she demonstrates expanded horizons; her collaboration with murmer is particularly notable as it unfolds during a time of compression. We all have our own pandemic stories; each of these artists was confined to a too-small space, yearning for physical and spiritual escape.  In Belgrade, Ristić was under strict curfew and could be arrested for walking her dog late at night. &n ..read more

Asphalt/Concrete is the sound of Osaka, or more specifically, that of Masayuki Imanishi‘s Osaka.  The artist records the sounds of “ordinary everyday life,” emphasizing that “all sounds were captured within my immediate vicinity.”  Fortunately, Imanishi has a particularly rich sonic neighborhood, or simply the right ears to hear it. The opening sounds are akin to breath, although they are not breath; one might call this the breath of a city.  From this point, the sonic field expands rapidly, from rushing waters to bicycle wheels to squawking birds, all with an undercurrent of co ..read more

Enrico Coniglio’s Galaverna imprint is back after a two-year hiatus, returning strong with Ramon De Marco‘s sonic exploration of Venice’s famous lagoon. The title is translated “the nameless hour,” although we’re having some fun with phonetics, as l’ora senza nome might be pronounced Laura sends a gnome in savage English.  Even this may not be too far off the mark, as the recording deals with humanity’s sonic intrusions, the balance and the beauty upset by the brashness. How much of each aspect might different listeners wish to hear?  One resident of Venice may claim that “Venic ..read more

Storm clouds are gathering on the cover of Alëna Korolëva‘s premonitions.  The beach lies empty; even the crabs and gulls have sought shelter.  But this is no normal storm; the artist is having premonitions of a larger storm, an ecological-societal-spiritual disaster looming and encroaching fast.  The signs are widely available: disappearing insects and birds, melting icecaps, weather gone wild.  Korolëva imagines all of nature chattering, creating a clamor, audibly agitated, unsure of what to do, where to move, or whether or not any safe spaces remain.  This is h ..read more

Meteorologia is “not exactly a field recordings compilation,” states Portugal’s sirr-ecords, but field recordings are its raison d’être.  The album is awash in meteorological phenomena, with multiple weather systems threaded through its grooves.  Inspired by a famous quote from W.B. Sebald (“Meteorology is not superfluous to the story. Don’t have an aversion to noticing the weather”), the album makes connections between mutable weather and mutable timbre, first explored in the waves and shifting directions of Tiago Sousa’s “swirling wind and thin dust,” a 13-minute piano piece t ..read more

Some field recording artists travel to the ends of the earth to capture sounds many of us will never hear in person.  This year’s selection includes magma, ice and hydrophone recordings.  But field recording can be as simple as recording the sounds of one’s own backyard, twisting the dials on a hotel radio station or returning to a favorite town.  One artist listed below creates a soundscape of nature sounds out of real instruments. Whether the sounds are real or surreal, they reflect the nature of our site: to listen carefully to the music of the world, even when it isn’t label ..read more

Note to recording artists: when you include a staffer’s name in the title of your release, someone is bound to notice and smile.  con richard (por la adversidad a las estrellas may have been written for another Richard, but I’d like to think that all Richards are in solidarity throughout the world.  Our name was once one of the most popular on the planet, but now we are a dying breed.  According to one site no Richards have been born in the U.S. in the past three years, compared to 58,862 in 1946.  But Gil Sansón remembers his NYC friend Richard Garet from th ..read more

Pilgrims to the Kingdom of Heaven is an album about war and peace, past and present, fear and trust.  It is an album about faith, but it is also an act of faith.  The invasion of Ukraine has reopened young wounds and revived old anxieties in the Czech Republic, itself no stranger to russian aggression.  War and the specter of war loom large in Ká’s soundscape, primarily a set of field recordings, occasionally bordering on radio-play.  Harry Truman announces the surrender of Japan; the thread extends to today’s headlines. Where might one find peace in such a climate? &n ..read more