Field recordings

Loving the shit out of some field recordings lately.

Right now, I'm listening the Geir Jenssen/Biosphere recordings from Tibet ("Cho Oyu 8201m").

Recommend me more! Also general field recordings discussion thread.

For sleeping purposes I love Francisco López's album - Wind [patagonia]. It's like being in a tent whilst the wind pounds you but you're wrapped up nice and warm inside.

The Room40 compilation Airport Symphony is a pretty wild double album for treated field recordings of Airplane stuff - http://boomkat.com/downloads/76443-fennesz-room-40-various-airport-symphony

A second Room40 compilation that's not necessarily 100% field recordings but recording about certain locations is Audible Geogrphy. I mention it as it's gone one of my favourite field recordings by Toshiya Tsundoa called 'Small Sand-stream On Beach' which is a contact mic picking up tiny grains of sand falling down a hill on the beach. Reminds me of my summers as a kid staying for hours on the sea front down in Devon - http://boomkat.com/downloads/147892-various-room-40-audible-geography

Not strictly a field recording album, but Thomas Koner's - La Barca is way up there as one of my favourite albums and is entirely filled with field recording stuff throughout the world

And obviously it goes without saying the albums by Chris Watson are always way up there in the field recording circlues

  On 3/6/2013 at 10:44 PM, mcbpete said:

 

Not strictly a field recording album, but Thomas Koner's - La Barca is way up there as one of my favourite albums and is entirely filled with field recording stuff throughout the world

 

And obviously it goes without saying the albums by Chris Watson are always way up there in the field recording circlues

This. Touch definitely seems like the go-to label for field recording albums. A good one for treated field recordings is Hazard's album Wind. And I haven't heard it yet, but Jacob Kirkegaard's album Eldfjall looks interesting:

"This CD consists of geothermal recordings of vibrations in the ground around the area of Krisuvik, Geysir and Myvatn in Iceland. The recordings have been carried out using accelerometers inserted into the earth at various places around the geysers, mapping the sonic aspects of volcanic activity at the surface of the earth."

Still need to dig into Jana Winderen's work.

Freesound. My favorite source of field recordings.

Check out this French dude; http://www.lucferrari.org/ , French dudes are known for their concrete musics.

I've also worked with recordings from the field;

http://plugexpert.bandcamp.com/album/masker-iii

the three last field recordings albums I've realy enjoyed are the following ones:

Three immersive records far from being the usual water & forest sounds.

  On 3/6/2013 at 11:06 PM, Tauhid said:

 

Still need to dig into Jana Winderen's work.

She's great. This her best imo:

this one is quite bizarre but very original:

  Quote

In keeping with the story, the recording is likewise strange. If its source materials are natural sounds, they’re of a distinctively alien kind; for all one knows, they’re untreated, but they nevertheless exude a quasi-electronic and industrial character. Myriad unidentifiable sounds make up the piece, with all of them repeatedly bobbing to the ever-steady surface throughout the recording. Muffled, rustling, and whirring noises appear, some seeming object-related and others traffic-generated—perhaps the distant whooshes are trucks and cars driving past the forest site. Close listening reveals a faint industrial drone in the background and even fainter siren-like wails popping up now and then; in the thirty-ninth minute, what sounds like a blurry radio transmission emerges for a few seconds. Are the wails the cries of turtle souls in agony? Are the rustling noises indicative of their movements? No answers can be conclusively given to such questions, leaving the listener to simply take the recording’s enigmatic content on its own inexplicable terms.

I don't think you can hotlink from pixogs boss, all the pictures are coming up as broken links ...

  On 3/7/2013 at 6:24 PM, the anonymous forumite said:

 

this one is quite bizarre but very original:

 

 

  Quote

In keeping with the story, the recording is likewise strange. If its source materials are natural sounds, they’re of a distinctively alien kind; for all one knows, they’re untreated, but they nevertheless exude a quasi-electronic and industrial character. Myriad unidentifiable sounds make up the piece, with all of them repeatedly bobbing to the ever-steady surface throughout the recording. Muffled, rustling, and whirring noises appear, some seeming object-related and others traffic-generated—perhaps the distant whooshes are trucks and cars driving past the forest site. Close listening reveals a faint industrial drone in the background and even fainter siren-like wails popping up now and then; in the thirty-ninth minute, what sounds like a blurry radio transmission emerges for a few seconds. Are the wails the cries of turtle souls in agony? Are the rustling noises indicative of their movements? No answers can be conclusively given to such questions, leaving the listener to simply take the recording’s enigmatic content on its own inexplicable terms.

  On 3/7/2013 at 6:17 PM, the anonymous forumite said:

the three last field recordings albums I've realy enjoyed are the following ones:

 

 

 

 

Three immersive records far from being the usual water & forest sounds.

 

  On 3/6/2013 at 11:06 PM, Tauhid said:

 

Still need to dig into Jana Winderen's work.

 

 

She's great. This her best imo:

 

thanks mcbpete !

Thanks, I'll check out Heated.

I haven't listened to these yet, but Lawrence English released a collection of his field recordings (40 total) for free last year:

http://emporium.room40.org/products/507516-lawrence-english-songs-of-the-living

http://emporium.room40.org/products/507517-lawrence-english-and-the-lived-in

should be good, thanks to you !

A few artists doing really interesting stuff with field recordings are Dave Philips, Toshiya Tsunoda, Artificial Memory Trace, David Toop and Giancarlo Toniutti. Generally minimal processing involved but some of their records take a musique concrete approach. Also check out this blog called The Field Reporter. Amazing resource.

Most of his tracks aren't just solely field recordings, but Of is really good (and impossible to google, so look up Loren Chasse).

His old albums are the best, especially The Buried Stream.

http://www.discogs.com/Of-The-Buried-Stream/release/747078

I started uploading some of my field recordings to Soundcloud today:

https://soundcloud.com/jake-muir

Anyone else have field recordings to share? Curious to see/hear the kinds of things others have recorded.

I love hunting down field recordings on soulseek by searching for generic recording device output file names, the kind of stuff that people record on a whim and dump somewhere in some anonymous folder in their music collection to be forgotten with no real intent to share. most of the stuff you come across that way are foreign language lecture records and other boring stuff but I have found some wild Tibetan vation and other random stuff that I doubt anyone else has. once a field recording is marketed it looses half its charm.

^That sounds really rewarding. Care to share your process in a little more detail?

  On 5/3/2013 at 8:07 AM, Tauhid said:

I started uploading some of my field recordings to Soundcloud today:

 

https://soundcloud.com/jake-muir

 

Anyone else have field recordings to share? Curious to see/hear the kinds of things others have recorded.

this is a video to accompany a field recording I did in Yellowstone park

here is a recording of one of the more heated Occupy Oakland protests which ends in a tear gassing

someone made a recording I did of a repeated Stellar Jay bird's nest feeding into a video, but it's a little quiet

What a great thread. Take me days to sift through all of these links and names.

I found this today on Vimeo - Translucent Village: Field recording and pinhole photography in Tyneham Village

Anybody here use a Zoom H2 for field recordings? What are some good settings for it?

Switch it to medium sensitivity and set the volume level to 100. That's the best snr you can get from the lovely thing.

If you're recording outside stuff buy the 'dead-kitten' that's meant for the Rode NT4 mic (eg this one - http://www.soundsliveshop.com/p/Rode_Dead_Kitten_Stereo_Video_Mic_Windshield/RODE-DEADKITTEN?CAWELAID=1830896565&catargetid=1821229290&cagpspn=pla&gclid=CLqonMjv_LYCFQjKtAodV2QA0A ). It fits on top the H2 perfectly -

The latest Chris Watson album is amazing, as usual. Picked it up a couple days ago:

bump

I have been listening to this while reading on the train and working, absolutly loving it, if anyone else has recormendations like this that would be great

http://www.discogs.com/Annea-Lockwood-A-Sound-Map-Of-The-Hudson-River/release/643515

this is also great, it was on for a entire week, i have a lot of it (nearly 48hrs worth) if anyone is interested

http://podcasts.resonancefm.com/archives/category/shows/edible-landscapes

http://www.discogs.com/Annea-Lockwood-A-Sound-Map-Of-The-Danube/release/1364711

http://forum.watmm.com/topic/86960-foundscoundscape-live-radio-collage-of-foundsound-places-to-underscore-your-personal-spaces/

Also I think Annea Lockwood is the only field recordist out there who specializes in river sounds. If you're curious about underwater sounds, check out Jana Winderen's work.