Things you do while you're in lockdown...possibly the result of listening to too much Calibro 35 while binge-watching old Terry Nation shows...

This is a version/remix of 'The Installation' by The Green Child from the album Shimmering Basset...you can hear/buy the original song here: https://thegreenchild.bandcamp.com/track/the-installation

Magpies can imitate a wide variety of sounds. But unlike lyrebirds, who imitate discrete noises, magpies tend to incorporate these sampled sounds into their own warbled improvisatory compositions, much like a jazz musician or a modern electronic musical artist. This is Friendo, one of our regular visitors, impersonating a car alarm as part of a longer improvised passage.

This is a proof-of-concept piece for a bigger project I'm planning some time in the future. It's basically a field recording of a magpie (Mrs Scruffy-Back) warbling in my backyard this morning, while standing on the back of a chair, with myself as the only audience member. I cleaned up the recording a little, then added a piano line an octave lower to emphasise the musicality of her performance. Transcription is available on request.

Wally, Shonen Ninja by stobiepole

A recording made in my backyard of a typical magpie carol (a territorial song that a group of magpies will sing together, with one magpie starting the call and the others joining in). The first time is at normal speed, then the call has been timestretched repeatedly, starting with twice the length, then four times, eight and so on, until the recording plays for sixty-four times the original length. I used IRCAM Labs TS 2 for the timestretching. The final results sounds very much like Ligeti or some primitive electronic soundtrack, which is not surprising given the Australian magpies' peculiar method of producing sounds (read Gisela Kaplan's paper on the subject here: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3187623/ )

Luffy's Lament by stobiepole

Remix of Andy's track for the twentieth anniversary of World Toilet Day. Go buy it here: https://andras.bandcamp.com/track/worldtoilet-org

Started off as a dub experiment but then one thing suggested another thing and it all went off in a different direction entirely...the photo is from when Kate went to Almeria, where a lot of eurowesterns were filmed.

A quickie...prepared piano and a recording of a 1943 3DB wartime public service announcement kindly given to me by Maurice Austin, from his collection.