Dave Phillips — Field Recordings

As its title suggest this is made up purely of field recordings taken from various jungle areas in and around Thailand, over a four year period. The field recordings are left as recorded and tamper free, and I have to say this is one of the most replayble, strange, haunting and rewarding field recordings disk I’ve come across.

Dave Phillips is know to many for his often vomit educing & mind frying sound cut-ups and noise attacks. Here he takes his keen ear for unusual and often very odd sounds and takes us on a heady, strange, natural ambient sonic journey. Taking in insect, gibbon, bullfrog and canine sounds,  along with waterfalls, heatseettling and the general  rich and often very bizarre sounds of the jungle. Though there is no editing or manipulation going on here the sequence of the tracks is very clever going from slightly jarring, hallucinogenic and highly atmospheric. As expected with this type of thing the tracks are often very short going from a few seconds up to minute plus, but it all seems to flow well making an enjoyable and consistent whole. A few tracks are a little longer and the longest here is the simple breathtaking track 17 which is a recording of a sunset Concerto of inserts that goes on for 20 minutes &  mangers to be both alien, ambient, soothing, bizarrely rhythmic, haunting  & simply amazing really- built around the various rich and strange tones of the insects. Really standing up as a  great and strange piece of ambience in its own right.

The disk comes in a nice oversized full colour folder with liner notes by Mr Phillips and pictures from his trips around Thailand. This will certainly appeal beyond the normal field recording market, been of interest to ambient and noise fans too.