A Closer Listen
Hearing of the Environments series, we wondered how we missed such a thing, until we saw the dates: an album a year from 1969-79, each side portraying a single environment. The final installment offered “Alpine Blizzard” and “Country Thunderstorm,” with nude artwork that generated controversy and caused some mail order companies to cancel their orders! This all seems quaint now, but those were simpler times. Click above to see the *shocking image*!
Fast-forward 46 years. Field recording has traveled far from its early associations with relaxation, sleep and the new age movement. Irv Teibel’s series has stood the test of time, and is worthy of revisitation. And recording itself has changed, along with global environments; a swath of modern field recording captures areas in decline, highlighting the effects of pollution, deforestation and climate change. Soundscape artists have also begun to imitate field recordings, often so convincingly that one is hard-pressed to tell the difference. In like fashion, A.I. has attempted to substitute for the human voice. Into this new environment steps Machine Listening (Sean Dokray, James Parker and Joel Stern) with a brand new edition to the series, unlike any that have preceded it. Using the original recordings, the collective has remixed and reimagined the sounds, blurring boundaries between original and fabricated, human and machine. Instead of altering moods, the album is meant to alter awareness. A slew of narrators and “voice clones” joins them in this process.
“Is it difficult to reproduce the sounds of nature?” The narrator recalls a composer who recorded the sounds of the ocean, then declared them imperfect, “adding synthetic waves until everything sounded just right.” This was Environments 1: The Psychologically Ultimate Seashore. In a whisper, awed and embarrassed, the narrator recalls buying all eleven copies of the original series, thinking they were “better than the real thing.” Now new voices, or the old voice imitated and duplicated, causes us to doubt what we imagined was the original, a clever trick that underlines the point. Whisssh, whosssh! Of course that’s not the ocean. But is the ocean we hear the ocean?
“Reef mega mix” is the most honest title, part of a triptych with “Reef lullaby” and “Reef lament.” In “Reef lament,” the narrators pair modern concerns with ancient needs, bringing Enviornments 12 into the computerized future. Playing the sound of reefs back to reefs helps them to rejuvenate, if only for a time; and then things get complicated. The mind leaps forward: in a post-apocalyptic world, would playing computer-generated music back to humans prompt them to procreate? One imagines that it would depend on the human’s own memories of music, organic or fabricated. As humanity demonstrates an increased preference for articfically-generated music, will it make a difference? The primal choruses of “Dream chord / be in” suggest otherwise.
“Conversations we can’t understand” presents a chilling future disguised as progress. The album dips its toes into science fiction, imagining a world that may be only months or years away. Would be really want to understand what the animals are saying about us? If we are already indifferent to other humans, would the words of other animals move us, or simply amuse us? The stories told in “Symphony Natura” and “Planetary computer” are fascinating indictments, the album closing on the image of a “record silently looping round and round,” the only remaining evidence of a human presence. (Richard Allen)
Tue Jun 24 00:01:25 GMT 2025