In a 1954 speech, the influential environmentalist Rachel Carson advocated for a greater appreciation of the natural world, arguing that "the more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe about us, the less taste we shall have for destruction." Humanity may not have fully heeded her warning, but the record label Forms of Minutiae is trying to, using contact microphones, hydrophones, and radio receivers.
harkening critters' overwhelming length aids in its mission; if you make it to the end, you might forget that it was stitched together by humans. Our four- (or eight-, or ten-) legged friends don a kind of audial horror vacui to prove just how grand they can get.
KMRU's "Inta" follows a collage of soundscapes from different Kenyan towns. Insects buzz and hum in typical KMRU fashion before other animals begin to pop in and out, crowding you from all directions, collapsing and combining into one another.
"Buffalos in the Tallgrass Prairie (Oklahoma)," Félix Blume's recording of bison in Oklahoma's Tallgrass Prairie Preserve, elicits the fear of prey meeting its predator... a reminder of the bison's massive spiritual and tangible roles in shaping early Indigenous communities and their slaughtering by European settlers.
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