Album release date: 02/28/25

“The Best Field Recordings on Bandcamp, February 2025”, by Matthew Blackwell.

Details

The opera crawls into sea caves and the sensory worlds of cicadas and sea stars, hagfish and herons, beetles and bats. Pulling questions about collectivity, resonance, interconnection and attention into relation with one another, the project asks: how can learning the stories of our more-than-human neighbors help us better understand—and reimagine—the stories of our planet?

Track List

1. Overture 10:50
2. Can You Hear the Sea Caves Breathing? 01:41
3. The Sea Cave Has Gills And It Is Breathing 03:19
4. Bruised Piano 01:46
5. Piano Plucked and Bowed 02:10
6. Please Hold On 04:17
7. Foghorns 02:03
8. Kafele and the Pipe Organ 02:59
9. Golden-Headed Lion Tamarin and a Brass Marching Band 01:22
10. The Bats Are Listening 01:00
11. There Used To Be Frogs Here 02:04
12. Frost In The Fen 01:16
13. Graeme’s Roadkill Organ Is Resuscitated 03:16
14. This is Oscillating Breathing 01:25
15. The Sea Cave Growls 00:42
16. The Pipe Organ Has Gills And It Is Breathing 02:13
17. Dirge For The Insects 01:35
18. Cave Drips 01:08
19. The Swainson's Thrush Migrates at Night 01:42
20. Sea Star Walks on Glass 02:56
21. Flood Tide, Aperture Shift: The Cave Darkens 00:27
22. The Sea Cave Has Gills And It Is Breathing (Reprise) 05:22
22. Epilogue: The Sounds of Hagfish Feeding 02:47

Credits and Gratitude

Audio mastered by Michael Southard (RumourTone Music LLC).

Vocals performed by Mary Edwards, Leah Crosby, and Jacob Frost. Trumpet performed by Kafele Williams at The Church / Art House in Omaha, Nebraska.

Organ music performed by Julia Edith Rigby on the historical pipe organs at the Immanuel Presbyterian Church in Los Angeles, the Mount Allison University Chapel in New Brunswick, and The Church / Art House in Omaha, Nebraska. Piano recorded by Julia Edith Rigby at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts in Omaha, Nebraska. Viola, 1978 Yamaha Electone B55 electric organ, and sampling keyboard performed by Julia Edith Rigby. Sound sculpture (welded from sousaphones and found brass objects) performed by Julia Edith Rigby at the Grand Central Art Center in Santa Ana, CA. Field recordings feature radios, tape cassette recorders, starfish tube feet, sea urchins, bats, beetles, penguins, a Swainson’s Thrush and The Wrinkles in Time marching band in Omaha, Nebraska.

Pipe organ, electric organ, trumpet, viola, vocals, prepared piano, brass sound sculpture (consisting of found objects and instruments welded together then percussed, trumpeted and activated with transducers and contact mics), field recordings featuring: sea caves (temporarily transmogrified into walk-in cellos via wire and bow), ambulating sea stars, feeding hagfish, stridulating beetles, chorusing frogs and toads, braying penguins, respiring tortoises, echolocating bats and chorusing cicadas.

Brass sound sculpture welded at the Okada Sculpture and Ceramics Facility, Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts.