On September 7, NPR dropped an episode of All Songs Considered about an enormous new compilation album called "For The Birds: The Birdsong Project." It's a massive collection of original songs and poems about birds and inspired by birdsong. Artists range from Alice Coltrane, Nick Cave, Laurie Anderson, and The Flaming Lips to Sam Prekop, Devendra Banhart, Yo Yo Ma, and of course Andrew Bird & Jeff Tweedy.
Here's a link to the episode - https://www.npr.org/2022/09/06/1121237661/this-episode-is-for-the-birds
As I listened to the collection for a few days at work, my ambient brain thought of using some of the instrumental tracks in a mix. So for this mix all the tracks come from The Birdsong Project. Most of the cuts have worked bird sounds in with the music.
Unfortunately this collection is not available on Bandcamp. So it's very expensive to buy the full compilation, with the vinyl box set selling for $400 and the mp3 downloads going for $38 per volume. So I would suggest listening to the collection on Spotify which you can find here - https://www.audubon.org/news/the-birdsong-project-box-set
Here's one more link to check out - https://www.thebirdsongproject.com/
Cheers!
[ s t r e a m ] [ d o w n l o a d ] [ a p p l e _ p o d c a s t s ]
T R A C K L I S T :
- 00:00 Shearwater - Kwitaro Backbone
- 05:33 Sam Prekop - Stations Parallel
- 10:12 Aska Matsumiya - Tori No Uta
- 12:57 Paul Cantelon - Hymn for Four Birds
- 18:41 Makaya McCraven - For The Birds
- 21:27 Elliot Bergman - Crow Dialectic
- 25:27 Andrew Bird - Rare Birds
- 32:22 Joachim Cooder - Carolina Turtledove
- 34:55 Carla dal Forno - Morning Maggie
- 37:04 Devendra Banhart - Ka
- 40:20 Dexter Story - Wefoch(Birds)
- 43:40 Stuart Bogie - Far Rockaway
- 49:11 Woodkid - Altamira Oriole
- 51:57 Marcelo Zarvos - Nightbird
- 55:39 Cosmo Sheldrake - Evening Chorus(Live in the Bluebell Woods)
- 60:27 end
5 comments:
A natural plug in would have been a track from the heralded group "Birdsongs of the Mesozoic". Sounds like a delightful mix upon first hearing.
Interesting idea. I looked fwd to listening, but couldn’t get through it.
Ahh sweet sonic bliss...I can always count on you LLM to provide some audio respite from this world of turmoil and tumult. Merci encore. - signed: your feathered friends from Cape Breton recently hit by the fury of Fiona.
Thanks to everyone for the feedback!
Took a deeper dive today and frankly I was disappointed. Not by the mixing, but by the compositions (except for the Cantelon). Too many "midi-triggered" bird sounds off a consumer-grade casio keyboard. And rushing water from the same, praise be. These folks tried to use the bird sound as an instrumental voice, and that is unnatural and comes across "corny" in fact. Birds need to be overlayed with there natural location recordings, and don't fair well to "play on command". Composers have known this for centuries, but this lot appears to have no background on the subject matter. The pizzicato track at 25:27 was pleasant, but it is entirety too long, and has a bird (or a whistler?) talking back to the previous cadences - how corny can they get with no shame. I was pleased to come to know the beautiful and inspired Cantelon, but that distinguished gentleman did not deserve to be placed among these folks from the other side of the tracks (pun intended).
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