Blog Archives

Chris Watson has contributed sound recordings to the new series by David Attenborough,

The Frozen Planet.

The first of seven episodes, “To the Ends of the Earth”, explores the poles of our planet, where worlds of ice and snow are inhabited by bizarre and extremely hardy creatures. At the North Pole, as the sun returns after six months of darkness, two polar bears show their tender side and humpback whales join the world’s largest gathering of seabirds to feast in Alaskan waters…

Chris Watson’s new album, El Tren Fantasma, is due for release in the UK on 14th November 2011. A two track EP (vinyl) will be available shortly after…

Here is more information:

[Touch # TO:42]
CD – 10 tracks – 65 minutes

Artwork: Jon Wozencroft
Mastered by Denis Blackham

Track listing:

01: La Anunciante
02: Los Mochis
03: Sierra Tarahumara
04: El Divisadero
05: Crucero La Joya
06: Chihuahua
07: Aguascalientes
08: Mexico D.F.
09: El Tajin; El dia y La noche
10: Veracruz

“Take the ghost train from Los Mochis to Veracruz and travel cross country, coast to coast, Pacific to Atlantic. Ride the rhythm of the rails on board the Ferrocarriles Nacionales de México (FNM) and the music of a journey that has now passed into history.”

El Tren Fantasma, (The Ghost Train), is Chris Watson’s 4th solo album for Touch, and his first since Weather Report in 2003, which was named as one of the albums you should hear before you die in The Guardian. A Radio programme was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on Saturday 30 Oct, 2010, produced by Sarah Blunt, and described as “a thrilling acoustic journey across the heart of Mexico from Pacific to Atlantic coast using archive recordings to recreate a rail passenger service which no longer exists. It’s now more than a decade since FNM operated its last continuous passenger service across country. Chris Watson spent a month on board the train with some of the last passengers to travel this route. As sound recordist he was part of the film crew working on a programme in the BBC TV series Great Railways Journeys. Now, in this album, the journey of the ‘ghost train’ is recreated, evoking memories of a recent past, capturing the atmosphere, rhythms and sounds of human life, wildlife and the journey itself along the tracks of one of Mexico’s greatest engineering projects.

The radio broadcast received national press coverage in the UK:

The Observer:

It is over a decade since FNM operated its last continuous passenger service across the country but here sound recordist Chris Watson recreates its atmospheric journey with the help of the train recordings he made while working on the BBC television series Great Railway Journeys… through desert and city, but it is the rocking rhythms of the train itself that prove most memorable. [Stephanie Billen]

The Financial Times:

El Tren Fantasma (8pm) is Archive on 4’s recollection of a trans-Mexico rail journey by sound recordist Chris Watson. From desert to rainforest, hummingbirds’ wings to the boom of heat rising from the Copper Canyon, it recalls a beloved passenger train system abandoned by privatisation. **** [Martin Hoyle]

The Daily Telegraph:

Sometimes, radio can awaken the mind and sharpen the senses like no other medium. This “sound portrait” of a now-abandoned railway line that used to run between the Pacific and Atlantic coasts of Mexico is a good case in point. Captured by sound recordist Chris Watson more than a decade ago, it jostles with human, animal and mechanical life, filling the room with an atmosphere that is more richly evocative of Central America than any TV travel show I’ve seen. Diesel engines thrum, cicadas chirrup and passengers chatter, sing and argue. [Pete Naughton]

There is a feature in Pitchfork in October 2011 here

Exploring the Acoustic Landscape

LICA Building, University of Lancaster
9th November at 7pm

From 54 degrees North on the shores of Morecambe Bay to 78 degrees South beneath the surface of the frozen sea off the coast of Ross Island, Antarctica. Chris Watson is one of the world’s leading recorders of wildlife and natural phenomena. He traces a sonic connection through the rhythm and music recorded in the largest and most sound rich habitat on our planet.

Chris is also spending 3 days with students from the Lancaster Institute for the Contemporary Arts, Lancaster University. He will be running workshops and field recordings with the students in his first visit to the university.

Ten tracks, albums or recordings that have inspired and delighted me in roughly chronological order

01: Étude aux Chemins de Fer by Pierre Schaeffer

As a teenager back in the 1970’s this was my introduction to musique concrete and the revolutionary idea that one could arrange and compose sounds via a tape recorder. The track is full of dynamics, rhythm and the most wonderful displaced timbres. The potential for creating such a work was a fabulous and exciting prospect and guided me towards a new world of artistic expression.

02: (Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay by Otis Redding

Deep emotional expression, a fabulous voice and great production really opened my ears to this man and his soul music. There are many tracks to choose from but this one in particular speaks of a universal feeling richly cut into the vinyl grooves.

03: The Velvet Underground and Nico

Pop art and unpopular music just worked so well and encapsulated most of my energies and interests during this period. Excitement, experimentation, technology, drugs, danger, parties, lights, film, music and writing. The creative collaboration of any or all of these
elements was a stimulating educational process and the soundtrack was usually this album.

04: The Ballad of John Axon by Charles Parker and Ewan MacColl

The growing realisation for the creative potential of reel to reel tape recorders led me
to the producer Charles Parker and his fabulous radio ballads. Location sounds, real voices, Ewan MacColl’s music and above all a powerful and compelling story makes for
a piece that transcends the sum of the parts and becomes radio that rocks.

05: Neu! by Neu

A blurring of the distinctions between musicians and producers began here for me with
this great album produced by Conrad Plank. Sounds with a conceptual groove which were also interesting and danceable. I also felt an empathy for most of the German bands
of this period such as Can and Kraftwerk who were busy in their studios creating music for an international audience.

06: Nothing Here Now But The Recordings by William S. Burroughs

A powerful and disturbing dramatic realisation of the written word into sound by the author. The cut up and collage manifesto presented as an alternative spirit of the technology used
to convey the message that there were other messages embedded within the medium.

07: I Wah Dub by Blackbeard aka Dennis Bovell

I still don’t know how you get such powerful music onto a record. I was fascinated, delighted and overwhelmed by every track.

Olympic-standard rhythm and sound.

A drummer friend of mine at the time played this record on a big system and said it made him want to give up.

08: Falling Snow by Russell Haswall

A single album length recording of falling snow recorded with a pair of hydrophones
in the Suffolk countryside. Compelling and immersive with a strange narrative element. This is a very quiet recording of stunning clarity which encapsulates an event that happens all around us yet we hardly ever hear.

09: Cho Oyu 8201m by Geir Jenssen aka Biosphere

A celebration of a trek to and ascent of this Tibetan mountain and featuring a series of original and unprocessed tracks together with some re-worked material. The result is a powerful, challenging and emotionally complex journey into a place where most of us will never visit.

10: An ark for the listener by Philip Jeck

Philip’s work is quite simply a beautiful evocation of music as it exudes out from what is trapped beneath the surface. The reconstructions and subsequent textures reveal what has been lost, passed out of our sight, yet buried deep within our own imagination.
Chris Watson, August 2011

Chris Watson is once again working on Springwatch for BBC TV. This year it comes from the RSPB reserve at Yns-hir in Wales.

Ynys-hir Nature Reserve
Springwatch at the BBC

You can read Chris’s blog here and hear his dawn chorus recording here