Earlier than it received a GRAMMY for Best Boxed or Special Limited Edition Package, For The Birds: The Birdsong Project was a seed of an concept from co-creators Randall Poster and Rebecca Reagan. It was their preliminary pitch that drew within the greater than 200 musical artists, visible artists, and actors who participated within the mission—together with musician Alex Somers. The unprecedented scale of the endeavor instantly hooked Somers: “The Birdsong Challenge was so large that folks from so many alternative music communities had a minimum of one buddy who was part of it.” He knew he needed to be a type of individuals and felt assured placing his work into the arms of Randall Poster, a famend inventive thoughts who Somers describes as all the time pondering “exterior the field.”
However Somers’s historical past with birdsong goes a lot additional again; he has been utilizing discipline recordings in his music since he was an adolescent. From a younger age, Somers was taken with creating musical sounds utilizing non-musical devices resembling pots and pans. He describes how he and his brother would drum on their kitchenware or stroll round recording any auditory enter they discovered worthwhile, which they’d then mess around with on an digital sampler. “Opening your ears as much as alternate sound sources is one thing that I actually get pleasure from.”
This led to one among his first introductions to Audubon, by way of a set of discipline recordings which have turn out to be well-known within the sampling world. “I feel the Nationwide Audubon Society has been doing necessary work for a very long time.”
When approached to take part in The Birdsong Challenge, this private historical past performed a key function in his pleasure concerning the project. “When Randall instructed me concerning the mission, he mentioned it was very vast open, you are able to do something you need, could be impressed by it.” Somers was instantly drawn to the concept of a bit anchored in discipline recordings. Extra particularly, he turned taken with discovering the oldest discipline recording of birdsong.
That is the place the title for Somers’s piece stems from—“Might 18, 1929 – Misplaced.” It references the date of this unique discipline recording and conveys the sense that this second has each been misplaced to time whereas additionally being preserved by expertise. “It was cool—it was fairly quick. Nevertheless it sounded wonderful. As a result of as you possibly can think about, the recording expertise at the moment was very primitive. In my different work, I’m actually taken with primitive recording expertise and utilizing it and the way it sounds. I simply get thrilled by that and love that sort of stuff.”
From a technical side, Somers describes that he created a stereo discipline recording and commenced processing the recording by way of convolution reverb till a bit of overtone got here out of it. He would duplicate this and apply the identical impact once more, repeatedly, till he constructed “a bit of ambient setting.” As he continued experimenting with this course of, he started to listen to a chord development which he wrote beneath the birdsong.
“It was sort of like taking part in with that second, like going 100 years again in time and taking part in with that setting.” Somers felt impressed to think about what that second should have been like and hopes this wistfulness comes by way of within the piece.
Past their acoustic skills, birds converse to Somers on a deeper stage. “On the danger of simply sounding cliché, it’s simply so unbelievable that they fly…It’s simply such a metaphor for freedom, transferring in any route at any second.” He appreciates how ubiquitous and accessible they’re for all folks: “They’re lovely. They’re fascinating. They’re in all places.”
After spending his earlier years in Baltimore and Boston, in 2005 Somers moved to Iceland the place he lived for 12 years and collaborated with Icelandic artists together with Jónsi of famend band Sigur Rós. “The panorama could be very brutal and harsh and unforgiving. There’s little or no wildlife aside from birds,” he says, noting how ravens there are very a lot revered and part of the folklore.
After Iceland, Somers moved to Los Angeles the place he now resides and which he describes as being the alternative panorama and setting as Reykjavík. Regardless of it being a really metropolitan metropolis, Somers discovered an LA house that has allowed him to attach extra deeply to nature than ever.
“There’s simply a lot chook life, I find it irresistible,” he says. “As quickly as you’re awake, you’re simply in birdsong.” Many mornings he’ll hear a brand new chook’s tune and make a recording, saving it for future musical experimentation. “I simply benefit from the soundscape of it. Typically I’ll placed on discipline recordings of birds in my home, so you possibly can’t inform what’s taking place inside or exterior.”
As for the legacy and way forward for The Birdsong Challenge, Somers hopes “it encourages folks to perhaps make small donations each to teams like Audubon which might be doing good issues for the planet, and perhaps encourage folks to make small adjustments of their life to simply be extra acutely aware of the planet and its wildlife.” The facility of artwork to drive conservation isn’t to be underestimated, he says. “Typically even pondering one thing sparks change.”