birding...

Atmosphere Recordings

I didn`t really get it before – what`s the point of atmosphere recordings? I am used to listening to music for pleasure or the Radio for information whilst I`m working and slumping in front of the TV when I want to relax. Birdsong without ID always seemed to me to be as irritating as watching a documentary about big game in the Serengeti whilst all those birds flit in and out of shot and no-one tells you what they are!

So, being up to my ears in work, I stuck a atmosphere CDs on as background and I guess I got converted. This was no road to Damascus bolt of lightening just a gradual dawning. They are very pleasant and, of course, often evocative.

One can see a selection below of those I tried out courtesy of Wildsounds and Tuotanto Productions, very different experiences they were too.

I can recommend both the Wildsounds CDs as they transported me to two different continents. I`ve never been to Sumatra but the sound of Gibbons in the early morning is something I have heard in a couple of other places and it is truly one of the most wonderful noises nature can make. I love the cicadas and song birds, the African dawn and dusk with red-eyed doves and frog choruses but nothing compares to the haunting echo of gibbons in the mist. So Wildsounds took me back to some wonderful memories and I found a really good reason to try more of these atmospheric backgrounds.

Then I tried an offering from my favourite recordist in the world - Lauri Hallikainen. Nobody does it quite like him! These two offerings are as brilliant in technique as all his others. He never mixes in a studio or cuts and pastes for effect… what you get is what one would here were you wherever the recordings are made. Not what you or I would hear, but what this master hears… somehow he manages to place his gear just so that you get an incredible depth of sound.

The watery tape did not make me want to pee but it made me remember every bubbling stream or crashing shore I`ve visited. The dawn recordings of early summer had a few unfamiliar birds there – but then I`ve never been into a Finnish wood; however, they also transported me to birding memories of spring mornings when only the rattle of milk bottles reminds you that the world of man exists at all.

If, like me, you have never dipped your toes into this world of background wild sounds then get on in – the water`s lovely!

Fatbirder

Madagascar Soundscapes – Wildsounds [100% of income donated to saving the Madagascan Wetlands] http://www.wildsounds.com ISBN 1895665168

Jungles of Sumatra - Wildsounds [100% of income donated to saving the Madagascan Wetlands] http://www.wildsounds.com ISBN 1898665036

Lliljaisten vesien laulua – Songs of Silent Waters – Lauri Hallikainen - Tuotanto Productions http://www.kultasointu.com Vol 1 In the series Lyrical Pictures of Nature

Nouaevan valon kutsu – Call of Rising Light – Lauri Hallikainen - Tuotanto Productions http://www.kultasointu.com Vol 2 In the series Lyrical Pictures of Nature

Created: 4th Sep 2003