Bodies Extend Themselves Toward a Breathtaking Absence of Limits

Earth.FM has the pleasure and honour to announce our collaboration with multidisciplinary artist, field recordist, and DJ, Cameron Randall.

His work involves composing through an assemblage of field recordings, electro-acoustic sound, sampling, synthesis, AI models, and digital processing. Previous work has involved sculpture, algorithms, sound, moving image, text, and installation, while his monthly series Listening With is broadcasted on Resonance FM.

In this sound piece, Cameron takes us on a journey across the planet featuring Earth.FM's recordings from this Solstice season, in a sound montage that is evocative and intense, surprising and utterly beautiful. In his own words:

"This piece was made from a selection of field recordings by a number of international field recordists around the time of the December solstice. The recordings are so rich and diverse and I was immensely inspired by their depth and detail. I am interested in the remixing, morphing, and translation of sound—where the audio both retains its original sonic quality while also becoming something new. Every sound you hear in this piece originates from the initial recordings provided to me. Some sounds are more obvious in their genesis; others are more opaque. This is a line I often like to blur and play with. Thank you so much to Melissa Pons for commissioning me to do the piece for Earth.FM."

To work creatively on precious natural soundscapes is an exercise of affection and appreciation for our world. We truly hope that his cosmic piece inspires you in many ways.

Please find the original field recordings listed below alphabetically by the field recordist's surname:

“I try to find places that still carry a bit of this [...] feeling that [...] something might be watching me in the place I try to record, or that I may have some problems with finding my way back from the recording spot. [...] [R]ecording there [gives] a chance to capture this raw energy of nature.”

In this episode of Wind Is the Original Radio, the Earth.fm podcast, site curator Melissa Pons talks with Jakub Orzęcki. An acoustic ecologist and field recording artist based in Wrocław, southwestern Poland, Jakub was nominated for the Sound of the Year Awards in 2022, in the category of Best Natural Sound.

Jakub has made it his mission to highlight the noise pollution increasingly affecting acoustically sensitive areas, and to archive changes occurring in sonic environments. However, as well as exploring Poland’s remote wilderness and underground environments, his work also encompasses the acoustic heritage of the local folklore and traditions which are coming under threat from globalization. With his Polish Soundscapes initiative, Jakub records and assesses the relationship between biophony, geophony, and anthropophony within his homeland’s acoustic environment.

In their conversation, Melissa and Jakub discuss a novel way of thinking about his field recording work: the notion that different recordings have flavors. For Jakub, this relates to the emotions he feels in the place where they are made - maybe a flavor of adventure (for example, in relation to soundscapes “tied to [an effortful] expedition”), or the flavor of being “the first person in a place for a very long time”. There’s even the flavor of preparation and analysis, drawing on “old descriptions of [a] place[,] [...] of settlements that once existed there” and grounded in everything from maps of topography, light pollution, and air traffic to Lidar-based terrain models. 

Jakub also describes a more primeval flavor - one that comes from respect for, or even fear of nature, and which “mix[es] [...] fascination and unease”. This sonic flavor reminds us that, for most of human history, natural environments were so much more unpredictable, stronger, and powerful than we were, whether in the form of forests, rivers, mountains, or swamps. Capturing that sensation tells us how “small [we] are compared to what surrounds [us]”.

They also delve into topics including:

All this and much more, in a dense and fascinating conversation. You can find out more about Jakub’s work on his website. And, until next time, happy listening.

“To record well, you have to be listening well.”

This episode, part two from Endless Fields 2025, features a further selection of interviews between Earth.fm curator Melissa Pons and her fellow artists-in-residence. You can listen to part one here.

One of the co-founders of the event, Stefano Arrigoni, spoke to Melissa alongside Cameron Randall.

Stefano is a sound artist and anaesthetist from Italy, who lives in Marseille, France. His practice explores how sound can shape consciousness and open spaces between the inner and the outer. For Stefano, field recording is a form of healing, attention, and surrender. In his compositions and improvisations, recorded sounds trace paths that question authorship and reveal what lies beyond the first layer of hearing. 

Cameron, a multidisciplinary artist, field recordist, and DJ, composes through an assemblage of field recordings, electro-acoustic sound, sampling, synthesis, AI models, and digital processing. Previous work has involved sculpture, algorithms, sound, moving image, text, and installation, while his monthly series Listening With is broadcasted on Resonance FM.

Together, Melissa, Stefano, and Cameron discuss:

Melissa also spoke to Anna Clock, who co-founded Endless Fields with Stefano. Anna’s work as an artist, composer, and musician centers ways of listening, and encompasses theater, film, radio, installation, text, and live music. They also find the time to play the cello and offer affordable, gender-neutral hairdressing in the queer community.

In their conversation, Anna talks about:

You can contact Stefano here, and follow Cameron and Anna.

And check back for upcoming episodes! These will feature conversations with Jakub Orzęcki, an acoustic ecologist and field recording artist who lives in Wrocław, Poland, and the Berlin-based sound recordist and electronic music composer Gina Lo.

Earth.fm curator Melissa Pons was recently invited to attend Endless Fields 2025, as one of seven sound artists-in-residence at Portugal’s Estúdio Yucca, in the Algarve by the Ria Formosa lagoon. 

This inaugural edition of Endless Fields, organized by Anna Clock and Stefano Arrigoni, was funded by the Department of Applied Social Sciences at the School of Science and Technology (FCT), NOVA University, Lisbon, Portugal, and co-organized by its participants. Local facilitation was by Raquel Castro - curator, producer, film director, and former president of the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology - and Ivo Louro, PhD Candidate in History, Philosophy and Heritage of Science and Technology (at FCT NOVA), and “occasional” sound artist. 

During the residency, which involved collective listening and recording, sound performances, jams, and an open day, Melissa conducted interviews with her fellow participants. These conversations form the basis of a new two-part episode of Earth.fm’s Wind Is the Original Radio podcast. 

This, the first part, features Ivo, Iddo Aharony, a composer of electronic and acoustic music and environmental and multimedia compositions, and Xavier Velastín Vicencio - self-described sound designer, composer, technologist, and whale lover.

Ivo Louro - who is studying the acoustemologies of Aeolian instruments, examining how they have been used not only to make music from the wind but also to monitor and forecast weather in both scientific and traditional craft settings - discusses:

Iddo Aharony is a creative musician and listener who continuously explores the myriad intersections of sound, environment, culture, and technology. His body of work spans a wide variety of instrumentations, media, and interdisciplinary collaborations, from a fully-staged opera to various experimental projects utilizing live electronics, created in collaboration with visual artists, theater directors, scientists, and other musicians. He currently lives in Colorado Springs and is Associate Professor of Music Technology at Colorado College. 

He talks about:

Xavier Velastín Vicencio is a performance and sound artist whose practice spans live art, sound design and composition for theatre, sound installations, sound for video games, sound poetry, algorithmic composition, and digital instrument creation. His work often focuses on utterance, agency, the environment, technology, and the physicality of sound. Xavier is a resident of the Pervasive Media Studios, Bristol, and is currently on a research fellowship with the British Library's Eccles Institute, in London, England. 

With Melissa, Xavier speaks about:

We hope that you enjoy this episode. If you’d like to connect with the participants, you can do so here: Iddo and Xavier. 

And keep an ear out for part two - coming soon!

“I welcome every noise around me. No matter what it is: a duck, a fish, a deer farting. [...] You invite it all. And [...] this is [...] when you realize [that] every inch of this planet is occupied and we are sharing and coexisting with other species - [so] how can you ever be alone?” 

In this edition of Earth.fm podcast Wind Is the Original Radio, curator Melissa Pons speaks to 

Serge Bulat, a multidisciplinary artist whose work - which spans and hybridizes music, exhibitions, immersive games, radio, field recording, and psychological installations - explores the edges of performance, sound, perception, and identity.

Serge is from a Moldovan town divided from Ukraine by a river, with family hailing from both worlds. For this reason, borders are “a prominent subject in [his] work”, which seeks to question topics around unity, differences and similarities, and the utopian aspiration of finding “ways to live in a borderless world”.

Earlier this year, he released Phonomundi: Selected Recordings of Heritage Sites and Traditions 2017-2024, an album which draws upon years of recording, sharing, and contributing to projects, causes, and stories close to his heart. Phonomundi is also about engaging with “our absolutely disastrous path away from respecting our ears and respecting our culture and respecting our environment”.

Against a backdrop of woozy compositions by Serge, featuring nature soundscape recordings, he and Melissa discuss the trials of having a “noisy” mind, which feels like “war in your head” and means that “it’s hard to stop the thinking process” - but which can also lead recordists to “forget about [them]self and [...] start thinking about communities, people that are affected, and [how] that [can be] such an ego drop”.

Serge also talks about how ‘now’ is illusory, and his “weird relationship with time”: “I guess it might be some form of synesthesia, because I feel time; I feel its thickness and I feel its qualities.” The flow of time is “one of the driving forces behind [him] doing what [he’s] doing”, while field recording can provide “the nowest now that there can ever be”. He describes how, after experiencing difficulties with conventional mediation, he managed to develop his own system of meditation around listening, where “time stops [...] [and] you find that serenity and that absolute calmness and, for me, this is when I stop the noise”.

As he says, “We're all pieces of [...] a bigger body and we're [...] made of the same substance. [...] I always struggle to put anything like that in words [...]. It's easier for me to put it in music. [...] This is what music and sound does [...] and words don't.”

Together, Serge and Melissa also address topics including:

Listen to the whole interview for all this and much more (including the raw terror of Bob from Twin Peaks!).

Read more on the recent discoveries from the James Webb Telescope.

“Sound is life for me.”

The latest installment of the Earth.fm podcast, Wind Is the Original Radio, finds curator Melissa Pons in conversation with sound recordist and expedition leader George Vlad. You can listen to and read George’s work elsewhere on the site - and you may already have heard recordings of his in high-profile projects such as Dune: Part Two and Mufasa: The Lion King, as well as various documentaries, TV series, podcasts, and audiobooks.

The love of George’s life, as a recordist and collector of sounds, is to be among wildlife sounds, trying to understand them, and getting to share them. Though he confesses to being initially fastidious about avoiding anthropophony, he explains that he has become more understanding and flexible, given how reductive it is to imagine that nature is separate from humans (and vice versa): “We are moving forward, whether we like it or not; progress happens: people need to travel and use power tools.” However, though he has become more open to recording people, he draws a line at combustion engines.

He also shares about his journey from being a sound designer, when he originally saw field recordings as purely “tools or assets”, with no appreciation for the ecosystems they originated from. However, informed by his experience of growing up in the Romanian countryside - which taught him the value of loving nature and of living with it rather than trying to control it - he subsequently came to appreciate and take enjoyment from their beauty.

Additional topics addressed during the episode include:

Plus! The importance of making jam, playing video games, and reading Jules Verne.

George would be delighted if you’d like to engage with his work, so feel free to follow him on his YouTube channel.

“I prefer to live in the fantasy, not in the desperation of the crisis [...], you know?”

This latest episode of Earth.fm’s Wind Is the Original Radio podcast finds site curator Melissa Pons in conversation with Peruvian sound artist and ‘resilient designer’ Nahun Saldaña. In his work, Nahun explores the intersections between soundscapes and sound ecology, especially in relation to climate change and speculative sound future.

Together, they discuss:

We hope that you enjoy this episode, including Nahun’s irresistible exuberance and enthusiasm! You can follow him on Instagram, and check out the work - writing, photography, video, sound art, and ambient music - on his (Spanish-language) website.

For this March Equinox we have prepared a 60 minute Listening Party with soundscapes recorded in March from the North to the South Hemisphere. We're celebrating the season's transition and we want to invite you to reflect on how we can better accommodate our lives to our surrounding environment.

Tracklist:

01:58 Midnight Forest Frogs - Andy Martin

09:01 Western Capercaillie Makes Vocalizations in Early Spring - Andrus Kannel

12:49 Early Spring Thunderstorm in Beech Forest - Ivo Vicic

25:57 Hippopotamoes Preparing for the Night - Sounding Wild

39:36 Dawn Chorus is Saroluk - Enis Çakar

44:00 RDC Nightwalk in Rainforest - Owl - Gina Lo

47:02 Early Autumn Bushland Dawn near the Coorong - Khristos Nizamis

52:56 Tiny Little River - Verónica Cerrotta

56:24 Between Tree Branches - Melissa Pons

57:22: Here in There - Melissa Pons

You can listen to all of these soundscapes on our free mobile app at https://Earth.FM available for iOS and Android.

“I don't feel like nature is somehow healing me - I feel as if my body is remembering what it's supposed to be like.”

Earth.fm’s Wind Is the Original Radio podcast is pleased to share the second part of curator Melissa Pons’ conversation with sound designer and field recordist Andy Martin. (You can find part one here.)

Here, in another thought-provoking instalment, Andy shares his thoughts about deep listening, questioning (in part because of the varied ways in which it is defined) the difference from just… listening.

In the field, Andy “describe[s] [him]self as a witness”, of anything from “the trickle of water to hummingbirds which are out to kill each other” - but he refutes the idea of there being any “inherent meaning in a soundscape; it just is; it just exists”. Where deep listening often aspires to finding meaning or making a connection - “an intentional beauty or a message within the soundscape” - he asserts his conviction that there are no such intentions, beyond those of individual wildlife. 

“I can listen in wonder and awe”, but “there's nothing there that is a meaningful, special interaction for me; it is just life existing. If we're looking for a deeper connection, a deep meaning within the soundscape [...] we're missing the reality of what's there, and we're trying to put our own feelings, our own belief systems onto that reality - and that's not my job. [...] My job is to listen and bring forth.” What Andy sees as people’s misinterpretations of the natural world overriding the reality means that, “The moment I hear someone describe a dawn chorus as an outpouring of joy, they've lost me. Because that's what it sounds like to us - but that's not necessarily what it is.”

Further topics discussed in this episode include:

We hope that you enjoy this episode. If you’d like to connect with Andy, you can do so on LinkedIn and Instagram and listen to various recordings and other interviews here.

In this episode of Earth.fm’s Earth Is the Original Radio podcast - the first of a two-parter! - the site’s curator, Melissa Pons has a wide-ranging conversation with sound designer and field recordist Andy Martin.

The insightful and granular conversation explored the following topics:

Listen out for part two of the conversation, which will be released soon!

Also, below are all of the references mentioned during this episode:

And you can connect with Andy on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/andymartinnaturesound/ and Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/andymartinnaturesound/.