Antarctica | Craig Vear

GrDl 089 | Gruen Digital > [order]

MP3 & lossless WAV

In the winter (Austral summer) of 2003/4 I embarked on an ambitious musical project in Antarctica, having been awarded a joint fellowship from Arts Council England and the British Antarctic Survey’s Artists and Writers Programme. The purpose of my visit was to compile a unique library of field recordings from the Antarctic and sub-Antarctic regions, which would become the sound source for music composition.

The focus of my many field recordings was to capture and reflect the relationship between the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) and the continent it embraces, and the life and populations of the area surrounding the Weddell Sea. Under these headings, the natural sounds (wind, sea, weather and wildlife), the human sounds (scientists living and working, boat captains, ‘talking heads’ interviews and conversation), the mechanical sounds (machinery, generators, boats, scientific experiments, travel, entertainment), and the phenomenological sounds (whistling rigging, clanking objects, crunching ice floes, musical accidents) were of equal significance.

I journeyed to far and desolate lands, recorded colonies of penguins and seals, flew to isolated huts deep in the Antarctic Peninsula, and smashed through pack ice aboard an ice strengthened ship. I experienced the euphoric highs and the mind-crushing lows of solitude, the overwhelming presence of all who had come and gone, together with the realization that I was, as a human and an artist, a mere speck on this planet.

The main artistic product of my three-month journey is Antarctica, a large-scale surround sound electroacoustic composition, created from this sound library compiled during my residency. Described originally as “theatre of sound”, this piece was created as a sequence of scenes, immersing the audience in a three-dimensional sound-scape of Antarctica. This album presents new audio elements not previously heard before.

1. Iceberg (Rothera Point) – 12’20"

2. Uranus Glacier (Adelaide Island) – 5’08"
3. Katabatic Wind (Sky Blue) – 5’15"
4. Adélie penguins (Jenny Island) – 12’20"

5. R.R.S. James Clark Ross hold #2 (Lemaire Channel) – 21’51"

5 Tracks (56’54")

new net release by

Chris Whitehead - 'estuary'

listen / download by clicking here

sections of this release were recorded using JrF hydrophones

(click here for more info on Jrf hydrophones, contact mics & coil pickups)

Estuary CHRIS WHITEHEAD IHab021

Arnside stands where the estuary of the River Kent opens out into the vast, featureless expanse of sand that is Morcambe Bay. Classified as an area of outstanding natural beauty, this desolate landscape of mudflats and tidal channels is sliced through by the Arnside Viaduct, a 477m long railway bridge over the estuary built in 1857. Some trains carry a cargo of nuclear waste, often from other countries, to be processed at Sellafield Nuclear Reprocessing Plant further up the coast. The reinforced containers used to transport the waste are known as coffins. Some of the recordings were made using hydrophones to capture the ever present flow of water and the breathing mud.