Justin Bennett — Wildlife
The albums made using recordings made at zoological & Botanic garden’s in Berlin, Barcelona, Paris, Amsterdam and Bergen. Along with recordings made during a residence at Nau Côclea arts centre, Camallera in Catalonia. I think the thing that makes this so rewarding, replay-able and compelling beyond a lot of field recording based work is he’s often layering up the field recordings, so for example you may have an animal sound with background crowd noise but then he’ll add over the top a strange improvised ,slightly rhythmic or subtle harmonic or drone element. But it’s done in such a manner to enhance and make the field recording more captivating, odd and often highly beautiful. With the original sound elements are never getting lost or choked as Bennett skilfully adds in sonic layers. As the album progresses there seems to be more musical like touches added that all culminating in the simply breathtaking and hypnotic track Tiergarten 2, which seems to built around jungle like symphony of bird sound that is weaved with a graceful and goose-bump inducing beautiful harmonic drone element. Really it’s one of the most tranquil and beautiful things I’ve ever heard.
The cd’s packaged fittingly in a large fold-out picture poster with black and white photographs from the various zoological & botanic garden’s he visited in making wildlife. A truly wonderful release showing what really artistry, beauty and strange wonder can be made from field recordings if there in the right hands. Certainly this will be somewhere in my best of 08 list- but don’t hang about as it’s only ltd to 300 copies.