Listening Earth – Our Early Years, pt.1
Feb 20th, 2008 by andrew skeoch
Sarah and I were camped out in one of the most ancient forests in Australia, and the weather was turning bad.
The dense mountain forests of East Gippsland, in far-eastern Victoria, are a realm of giant tree ferns, towering eucalypt trees and impenetrable undergrowth. They are places of peace and majesty, of sheltered gullies, birdsong and sunlight-filled mornings. We had been in these high forests for several weeks, and had driven up remote tracks to arrive at a secluded campsite known as Waratah Flat. This was only our second time of recording natural sounds, and for the preceding few days we had been enjoying a forest full of birdsong.
But now the forest had become anything but peaceful, as a massive storm system was blowing in off the southern ocean. Ferocious winds whipped the crowns of the trees, and clouds scudded low overhead, sometimes enveloping everything in mist, rain or swirls of sleet and snow. Every now and then there would be the sickening groan of a tree branch tearing loose and the heart-stopping crash of it hitting the ground. To attempt to drive out along the miles of forest tracks would have been foolhardy. The forest was being shredded, and we were huddled inside a small tent, waiting for the sound of the next branch to be tortured loose and come crashing down, unable to do anything but sit out the storm.
It seemed an opportune time to consider our future…
But first, let me backtrack a little… Sarah and I met in 1989, and right from the beginning we dreamed of working creatively together. Sarah had studied massage and worked as manager of a handcrafts shop. I was teaching voice and meditation classes, and together we were living in a very cute little mud-brick cottage in the bush outskirts of Melbourne. Eventually we established Listening Earth as our own independent label, with the idea of weaving my interests in music and nature, and Sarah’s talent for photography, into a business that could sustain us.
One of our first projects involved recording my music for lute. The lute is a lovely gentle instrument, softer than the guitar in sound, with a history dating back to the European renaissance and beyond. The character of the lute appealed to me, and during bush camping trips I would sit in the shade of a tree writing my own compositions for it. So we eventually conceived the project of recording these compositions in the ’studio’ they had been inspired by – the bush itself.
We chose to record at Mootwingee National Park in western New South Wales, an extraordinary landscape that is both a haven for wildlife in the harsh outback, and an ancestral meeting place for aboriginal peoples. (Our nature photo gallery from Mootwingee).
We were there for nearly two months; trekking, exploring, photographing, recording the music – and most importantly, discovering the local birdsong and how to record it. I clearly remember one of our first mornings, standing in the semi-darkness of pre-dawn and hearing Spiny-cheeked Honeyeaters calling across the ridgelines. Those beautiful cascading ripples of sound were a revelation to us, I had no idea natural sounds like these existed. We had begun to hear the voices of the bush.
The Mutawintji mob; rangers and aboriginal staff with us at Mootwingee.
And yep, that’s a mummified Wedge-tailed Eagle behind us…
We returned home to complete the project, mixing the music and birdsong together, the resulting album being titled ‘Rockpool Reflections’. We began getting it out to the shops ourselves, however the feedback was mixed. Listeners loved it for the gentle music and birdsong. However this was the early 1990s, and retailers were viewing it as a ‘new-age’ album, and we found ourselves being overlooked in favour of mass-selling ‘inspired-by-nature, relaxation music’ artists. Hence we were unsure about how to proceed for our next project.
(‘Rockpool Reflections’ is still available as a CD or download from our webshop. You can find out more about the album here, or listen to the mp3 sample with those beautiful Spiny-cheeked Honeyeaters.)
