Natural Thinking

“When I was down by the river at Port Eliot last year, it reminded me a bit of the banks of the River Mara in Kenya – the tide was out, so there was lots of mud and I could imagine hippos wallowing around.

I’m going to bring some very exotic sounds from rivers around the world, to bring an international flavour to it – so there’ll be hippos, fish eagles, elephants, zebras and giraffes crossing the river, hyenas lurking in the undergrowth, a pride of lions too. Perhaps some South American river sounds as well; vampire bats, waders and flamingos – a colourful audio landscape. It’ll be really atmospheric.

I like to put microphones in places where you wouldn’t be able to – or want to – put your ear and then listen. It can be amazingly revealing. I’ve discovered recently – and this is what attracted me to Caught By The River – that sound in water or ice travels much better than sound in our air-breathing environment. Seventy per cent of our planet is water; we arrogantly think we live on Planet Earth, but we don’t, we live on Planet Ocean. It’s the most sound-rich environment on earth and that includes the rivers that snake out of the Channel and into Cornwall… they’re full of sound.

I normally just layer soundscapes, but this time I’m going to bring a whole load of tracks and mix and match them live. I’m looking forward to DJing the sounds; it won’t just be a track running – I’ll be able to respond to the crowd. I may even do a request slot.

A lot of the work I do, out of necessity, is very solitary. It’s quite a lonely occupation in that sense – I go off to places and put some headphones on and peer into the world and sound of that place. I really like coming out at the other end and playing a broadcast and sharing what I’ve found with people.

The great thing is that people get it – my work doesn’t need a great deal of explanation for people to engage with it. I’ve got an amazing recording of vultures descending on a zebra carcass – I miked it up from the inside – so it’s this really gruesome but visceral recording. It’s not academic; people engage with sound very simply and easily, and it strikes into your imagination very directly.

I’d love to do a piece inside Port Eliot House; it has some amazing potential. As soon as you step through the front door you hear the character, the 1000-year acoustics of the place. It’s very quiet, but there’s a tangible sense of place; the history and the people that have walked on those floorboards. It’d make a remarkable, powerful piece.

The live pieces that I do are a really good way to connect with people. In Gothenburg, I did a rhythmic piece with the sounds of bats and insects and people were actually dancing. But then I did a set in San Francisco, with all these laid-back Californians who, as soon as they came in, found a space and lay on the floor, waiting for the lights to go off. It was really cool – they just lay in the dark in front of this massive sound system. At Port Eliot, people can just do what they want – wander around or sit and listen.

It’s all about listening. It’s very simple – there’s no magic to it, we can all do it. It’s just that most days we spend all our time blocking out the noise just to tune into what we need to. We hear everything but we rarely listen. At Port Eliot there’s very little noise pollution; it’s a place you can go and open your ears and listen properly, engage with the place.

If there’s a particular sound of nature that you’d love to hear at Port Eliot this year, email [email protected] and we’ll forward your request to Chris.