Chris’s recordings have been used in other media too.
Feature Films include The Constant Gardener [2005]
Theatre Productions include Red Ladies by The Clod Ensemble [2008]
Playstation Games versions of the Harry Potter film series
Album Tracks including ‘Illuminant’ by Efterklang [Leaf, 2007]
‘Twit twoo’
In the world of wildlife sound recording, Chris Watson is the daddy. Pascal Wyse gets up before the birds and tracks him down to a wood in Wales to find out what his favourite bird songs are..
Qwartz Awards, Paris 2008
Touch has entries in 12 nominations for the Qwartz Awards 2008 and will be appearing live for these awards. A special edition of Touch Tone 25 has been manufactured for this event, with the kind permission of the artists.
April 3rd: Black venue: Maison des Métallos, rue Jean-Pierre Timbaud, Paris 75011 (Metro Couronne). Before Blixa Bargeld speech/performance:
Rosy Parlane | Fennesz
April 4th: Cirque d’Hiver Bouglione: 110 rue Amelot, Paris 75003 (Metro Filles du Calvaire). 1 hour after Blixa Bargeld, Max Mathews, Jean-Claude Risset and Beatriz Feyrrera [Qwartz d’Honneur attributions] from 23h to 1h30, with Radio France [France Musique] direct retransmission, Qwartz’s official sponsor.
Chris Watson | Philip Jeck | BJNilsen
Free entrance
Chris Watson is heavily featured in the new David Attenborough series, Life in Cold Blood, BBC1 throughout February 2008… if you miss an episode you can see it again on the BBC iplayer site [UK only] here
[photo: Sean Thamer]
A major new sound installation at Sunderland Museum & Winter Gardens
Presented as part of AV Festival 08: 29th February – 9th March 2008
Artists’ Talk & Desert Island TV: Sat 8 Mar, 2.30 -3.30pm
Chris Watson discusses his new work Whispering in the Leaves. The talk will be followed by Desert Island TV, where Chris will introduce and screen BBC nature documentary the Life of Birds made with David Attenborough. Free, for bookings contact info@avfestival.co.uk
For AV Festival 08, Watson has created a powerful new sound work derived from his extensive archive of wildlife and on location recordings in Central and South America – habitats that host over half of the planet’s wildlife. Diffused through the tropical foliage of the enclosed botanical environment of the Winter Gardens, which is home to over 2,000 flowers and plants, the surround soundtrack of wildlife dawn and dusk choruses will be transmitted at hourly intervals throughout the day for 15-20 minute durations – the approximate time taken in the rainforest for the transitions from darkness into light, and from daylight to dark. The sound pieces feature the calls and voices of thousands of species, including the howls and shrieks of black howler and spider monkeys, the musicality of diverse birdsong and the shimmering and hissing of tree frogs and cicadas. A highly sensory and captivating experience, Whispering in the Leaves is a remarkable demonstration of the power of sound recordings and natural history broadcast to transport us to far flung, inaccessible and often extraordinary locations.
LISTINGS INFORMATION
Venue: Sunderland Museum & Winter Gardens, Burdon Road, Sunderland, SR1 1PP
Free entry, opening hours: Mon – Sat 10am – 5pm, Sun 2pm – 5pm.
T: 0191 553 2323 / W: www.twmuseums.org.uk/sunderland
Installation: Fri 29 Feb – Sun 9 Mar 08
Live performance: Thurs 6 Mar 08, 8.30 – 9.00pm
FREE but limited capacity to register your interest contact info@avfestival.co.uk
A full press release can be downloaded here
Bill Oddie was singing the praises of Chris Watson on a recent episode of ‘Richard and Judy’ on Channel 4 TV…
Meanwhile over on BBC2, Bill Oddie’s new series “Bill Oddie’s Wild Side” started on January 9th. With sound by Chris Watson, and video footage by John Aitchison, this series continues on Wednesday night’s on BBC2…
Bill Oddie, cameraman John Aitchison and sound recorder Chris Watson reveal the hidden lives of Britain’s wildlife. John lies in wet sand for seven hours to film small birds.
Chris is asked by Bill to demonstrate his parabolic reflector and his sonic coathanger! Those who have attended his Wildeye sound recording courses will know exactly what he is talking about.
“Its not noise, Bill. Its SOUND!”
Hot 100 Craft and Post
Chris has been named in Broadcast’s ‘Hot 100’ hottest names currently working behind the scenes in TV.
Chris Watson has worked closely with two of the most high-profile natural history presenters in the business, David Attenborough and Bill Oddie. He is Oddie’s favourite sound man and the TV veteran says of Watson: “I don’t know anyone who is so intense yet so splendidly frivolous.” Watson became a sound recordist in 1981 when he joined Tyne Tees Television and is now widely regarded as one of the most creative sound artists in the business. His credits this year include the hugely popular Springwatch and Autumnwatch, and he received the Wildlife Film Asia Award for the BBC’s Galapagos: Born of Fire. Watson also creates for the radio, with credits including Soundscape: The Sea Swallow, Watersong and The Estuary all for BBC Radio 4. He states his interests as recording animals, habitats and atmospheres from around the world.
Monday 28th January 2008
10am – 5pm
FIELD RECORDING IN THE CITY with CHRIS WATSON
We are delighted to welcome back natural sound recorder extraordinaire Chris
Watson for another field recording workshop following the sell-out success of his workshop as part of the Atmospheres festival in October 2007.
A voluntary recording session on the Sunday evening (27th Jan, 9pm – 1am) will allow attendees to gather recordings in a useful session in London lead by Chris himself, before the workshop commences on the Monday. The workshop will include a practical guide to techniques and equipment and also a critique of each attendees work. Cost includes refreshments, lunch, the Sunday evening session, and a copy of the workshop material on CD/DVD.
Cost: £50 (£40 Students)
UWE awards honorary degree to Chris Watson
On 1st December in Bristol Cathedral, a Doctorate of Technology Honorary Degree was conferred by the Pro Chancellor on Chris Watson
“The Honorary Degree is awarded in recognition of outstanding contributions to sound recording technology, especially in the field of natural history and documentary location sound”
‘Weather Report’ is named in The Guardian’s ‘1000 Albums to Hear Before You Die’ List…
Watson is one of the world’s leading recorders of wildlife and natural phenomena, and here he edits his field recordings into a filmic narrative. The unearthly groaning of ice in an Icelandic glacier is a classic example of, in Watson’s words, putting a microphone where you can’t put your ears.
You can buy this album in the TouchShop
Touch Sevens 02
7″ vinyl only
Cut by Jason at Transition 7th August 2007
Track list:
A. 3m
B. 10m
The voices and rhythms of the Humboldt current around the Galapagos Islands recorded April 2006 using a pair of Dolphin Ear Pro Hydrophones onto a NAGRA ARES-Pll digital audio recorder
Locked grooves…
Chris Watson & Jana Winderen have both contributed recordings to the new Sigur Ros movie, ‘Heima’. This movie is to be premiered at the Electric Proms in London on October 24th 2007. An extract from ‘Vatnajökull’, from the album ‘Weather Report’ as well as other unreleased Icelandic recordings he has made.
A trailer of the movie, with a clip of ‘Vatnajökull’, can be viewed here
CD – 3 Tracks – 50:09
Chris Watson writes:
“During December 2000 several significant storm fronts developed across the North Sea and Scandinavia.
Benny remarked to me that he had recorded some of these on the Baltic coast and proposed a collaborative cd project based around our mutual interests in the rhythms and music created when the elements combine over land and out to sea.
We spent the next few years gathering recordings on our respective coastlines and islands during the very active weather windows during the autumnal equinox and winter solstice. This was focused around our following one particular cyclonic system, which veers over Snipe Point on Lindisfarne to the Isle of May in the Firth of Forth, and finally descends upon Öland and Gotland where Benny listened in with a favourite pair of Sennheiser omnidirectional microphones.”
Chris Watson
Newcastle upon Tyne August 2006
Tracklisting:
1. Chris Watson – No Man’s Land 15:51
Late October on the strands of Budle Bay where dense layers of transient alien voices are swamped by a full moon tide creeping across the island’s silver causeway.
Now lapping out of the gathering gloom an immersive sea wash is filling then draining away carrying slow currents from here to another place.
There are no reference points in this darkness.
Glimmer dawn in the gaping mouth of a sea cave below Tarbet Gulley where the siren songs of Cromarty, Forth & Tyne ebb and flow with the swell.
Draw in close but hear now a fresh voice from beyond the horizon.
Recorded during the months of October & November from 2000 to 2005 on the North East coast of England and Scotland. Microphones; Sennheiser 2 x MKH 110’s binaural pair, MKH 60/30 M&S rig, DPA 2 x 4060’s spaced omnis. Recorders; Nagra lV-S, Nagra Pll and Sound Devices 744T. Edited and Mixed in Boston July 2006
2. BJNilsen & Chris Watson – SIGWX 18:50
Viking, Forties; Cyclonic North East gale 8 backing North later 3 to 4.Thundery rain, moderate to good.
Mixed in Boston and Stockholm June & July 2006
3. BJNilsen – Austrvegr 15:28
A black ruthless sea. Heavy winds making it impossible to stand up straight, icy rain hitting your face like needles.
Recorded on the southeast coast of islands Gotland and Öland, Sweden, using a pair of Sennheiser 110 binaural mics straight to a Tascam DA P1 DAT during December 2003 and July 2004. Locations used included cottages, sheds, barns, fields and the coast. Edited and Mixed in Stockholm 2006
“I was just on the Farne Islands, off the northeast coast of England, near where I live, and at this time of the year they are covered with Atlantic gray seals that have come to birth their pups,” environmental sound recorder and musician Chris Watson explains, recounting his latest field trip over a shaky Skype connection. “There are whole communities of female seals that sing and have these beautiful haunting voices. It’s sort of this siren voice. You can imagine sailors being drawn to it from across the waves.”
Watson has made a peripatetic and enviable career for himself as a sound technician for radio and television (he earned a British Academy of Film and Television Arts award for his work on the BBC’s The Sound of Birds), pursuing and recording the natural world’s siren calls. From the Rolls-Royce-like purr of a lounging cheetah to the deep groans of an Icelandic glacier following its inexorable 10,000-year-old course to the Atlantic or the literally visceral snap of vultures cracking through the rib bones of a zebra carcass, the sounds one hears on Watson’s solo releases (all on the Touch label) are a far cry from the ubiquitous whale song CDs that clog Amoeba Music’s new age bins.
Stunning in their clarity, Watson’s recordings are often beautiful and at times frightening. But more often than not, despite their natural provenance, they are simply otherworldly.
“It never fails to astonish me, the connection between the wild sounds of animals and what we hear as music,” Watson says, reflecting on our impulse to immediately draw aural associations. “These sounds have the power to connect straight to the imagination in the same way that a piece of music may evoke certain images.” Watson’s first experiments with sourcing the “musical” from his surrounding environment were in early industrial groups such as Cabaret Voltaire and Clock DVA, whose gritty samples and martial rhythms held up an acoustic mirror to the grimness of life in Margaret Thatcher–era Britain.
Although urban Sheffield is worlds away from a cove in the Galápagos Islands or a Kenyan veldt, Watson’s MO has remained consistent even as his locations have become more exotic and the available technology has dramatically improved from the first tape recorder he received from his parents at age 11. “Even in Cabaret Voltaire, I was interested in taking sounds from the world and working with them, or not working with them — just letting them be,” the musician says. “Gradually, I became more and more interested in the sounds I was hearing outside than the sounds I was hearing in the studio.”
Watson’s latest full-length, last year’s Storm, is also perhaps his most musical — at least compositionally speaking. A carefully edited three-part suite of field recordings, Storm traces a series of particularly aggressive weather… systems that hit the northeast of England and Scandinavia in 2000. Watson recorded the storm’s early rumblings — with the lonesome bellow of seals as accompaniment. Meanwhile, longtime collaborator B.J. Nilsen — who has released his own subtly processed, environmentally sourced ambient recordings under the name Hazard — caught what Watson calls “its last breaths” as it descended into the Baltic Sea.
“We were really fortunate to have a sort of narrative already there for us to work with,” Watson says. “Of course, we couldn’t record the storm as it was crossing over to Europe, so the middle track is a sort of conjecture of what it sounded like, a combination of [Nilsen] and my recordings.” The two have been experimenting with translating the album into a live piece, a version of which will be presented, sans Nilson, as part of Watson’s performance at Recombinant Media Labs on Nov 30.
Reflecting on past performances of the piece, Watson remarks that he is continually surprised by how audiences react: “It literally has a powerful, moving effect on people. People have said to me that they put their coats back on because they were cold or found themselves shivering.” Certainly, many more of us have heard if not experienced a powerful storm than could identify a recording of or have witnessed firsthand, say, giant sea turtles mating.
I jokingly ask Watson if he has ever visited the Tonga Room, the famed Polynesian-themed bar in the basement of the Fairmont Hotel, in which a tropical storm lets loose at 20-minute intervals over an indoor grotto. He laughs at the idea of the place and says that, regrettably, he hasn’t been. “But wouldn’t that be an amazing venue in which to perform Storm?” he suggests excitedly. The Fairmont’s guests would never know what hit them.
The Guardian [UK]
There is a feature on Chris Watson in 31st January 2007 edition of G2 of The Guardian by Pascal Wyse. The full text can be read here
The Leonardo Music Journal [USA]
16th edition – Noises Off: Sound Beyond Music
This edition comes with a compact disc featuring Chris’s recording “Blue Grass Music and Ant-Steps”.
Crack Magazine [UK]
There is a feature in Crack here
Blow Up [IT]
There is a feature in Blow Up here
Line Up [UK]
There is a feature in Line Up here
Sound of Music [SE]
There is a feature in Sound of Music here
Pitchfork [USA]
There is a feature in Pitchfork in October 2011 here
Basatap [TU]
You can read a feature in Turkish here
CD – 3 Tracks – 54:02
The weather has created and shaped all our habitats. Clearly it also has a profound and dynamic effect upon our lives and that of other animals. The three locations featured here all have moods and characters which are made tangible by the elements, and these periodic events are represented within by a form of time compression.
This is Chris’s first foray into composition using his location recordings of wildlife and habitats – previously he has been concerned with describing and revealing the special atmosphere of a place by site specific, untreated location recordings. For the first time here he constructs collages of sounds, which evolve from a series of recordings made at the specific locations over varying periods of time.
Track list and notes:
1. Ol-Olool-O -18′ 00″
A fourteen hour drama in Kenya’s Masai Mara from 0500h – 1900h on Thursday 17th Oct. 2002
2. The Lapaich -18′ 00″
The music of a Scottish highland glen through autumn and into winter during the four months of September to December
3. Vatnajkull -18′ 00″
The 10,000 year climatic journey of ice formed deep within this Icelandic glacier and it’s lingering flow into the Norwegian Sea.
Chris has released two previous solo albums for Touch, Outside the Circle of Fire [1998] and Stepping into the Dark [1996], as well as contributions for samplers and compilations for Ash International. His work was also used as source material for the compilation Star Switch On [2002], with contributions from AER, Biosphere, Fennesz, Hazard, Philip Jeck & Mika Vainio, as well as two tracks from Chris himself.
Chris is possibly best known for his sound recordings for BBC TV, particularly the “Life of…” series written and hosted by Sir David Attenborough. But his preferred media are cds and the radio. He has presented several programmes; “A Small Slice of Tranquillity”, “NightTime is the Right Time”, “Sound Advice” and “Tyneside Dawn”, all broadcast on BBC Radio 4. His work has been described as “the freakiest all natural techno disc ever” by City Newspaper [USA].
Chris was previously a member of the popular beat trio Cabaret Voltaire.
As Sasha Frere-Jones wrote in Time Out, New York, in 1999: “Listen to your world. It may be more interesting than all the things you buy to escape from it.”
CD – 22 Tracks
The purr of a cheetah close up against a baobab tree, waiting. Whales surfacing, breathing in cold air. Coll starling imitate the noise of farm machinery from the hollow ring of a ruined bothy. The rattle of wood over a black stream… Chris Watson’s second CD is a dramatic contrast to the spacious atmospheres of “Stepping into the Dark” (Touch TO:27, 1996). Featuring 22 close-up recordings of animals, birds and insect life, “Outside the Circle of Fire” enlarges our awareness of the sound universe, intimate with voices from the past. There is an intensity here that television pictures cannot conjure.
Akin, IRDIAL:
“An exhilarating journey into nature’s most private sonic ceremonies. Dreamily voyeuristic. Mysterious, perplexing, shocking and beautiful all at once. The Jaguar will destroy you.
Tracklist:
1. WAITING
Close up against a baobab tree, a cheetah, waiting… resting by Beobab tree. Pamuzinda, Zimbabwe, June 1994. Sennheiser mkh 416 to Nagra 4s
2. BREATHING IN COLD AIR
Breathing in cold air, Southern Right Whale
3. HORSE OF THE WOODS
Capull coille, ‘horse of the Caledonian woods’
4. SONG
Red rumped tinkerbird song
5. AT DUSK
The Maasai say hippos spend the day on the river bed telling jokes. At dusk they surface, laughing. Hippopotami emerging from the River Mara at dusk Itong Plains, Kenya. Sept. 1994. Sennheiser mkh 0/30* via SQN4s to TCD-D3.
6. WINTER FLAGS
Winter Flags on a spring tide. 20 000 knot find a roost
7. MACHINE NOISE
In the hollow ring of a ruined bothy, a starling mimics the noise of farm machinery
8. CANOPY
Dry topical contact calls follow spider monkeys through the canopy
9. SONG
Lemon rumped tinkerbird song
10. ACROSS THE IRIS BEDS
An evening chorus of corncrakes across the iris beds
11.THREAT
A lioness threatens
12. CRACKING VISCERA
Vultures taste the dry, crackling viscera inside the rib cage of a zebra carcass. Nine birds feeding on a zebra carcass. Itong Plains, Kenya. Sept. 1994. Sony ECM 77’s x 2**, 250m cable via SNQ4s to Sony TCD-D3.
13. DEEP ROAR
The deep roar of a red deer stag
14. UNKNOWN FOREST
Unknown forest duet, singing hidden in tree canopy. Dry tropical rain forest, Nancite, Costa Rica. Feb. 1995. Telinga mic and reflector to Nagra SNN.
15. OUT OF OUR SIGHT
Out of our sight, motionless anticipation, along the dry sandy banks of the Zambesi a mozambique nightjar is sucking in all the remaining light, singing amongst sandy scrub on the banks of the river Zambezi, Zimbabwe.Oct. 1996. Sennheiser mkh 30/60* via SQN4s to PDR1000.
16. LEAF LITTER
Leaf litter insect detail. Rain forest, Cameroon. June 1997. Telinga ‘Science’ capsule at 50cm to PDR1000.
17. SOULS OF DEAD CHILDREN
The souls of dead children are said to pass into kittiwakes
18. FOREST RIDE
Wood pigeon wings across a forest ride
19. SLEEPING IN WARM AIR
Elephants, sleeping in warm air, family group asleep in rough grassland. Maasai Mara, Kenya. Feb. 1996. Sennheiser mkh 30/60* via SQN4s to PDR1000.
20. RATTLE OF WOOD
Deathwatch beetles, the rattle of wood over a black stream
21. MOONLIT FOG
Tawny owls sing in moonlit fog
22. CONTACTS
Hyena contacts, contact whoops, Billashaka Luger, Maasai Mara, Kenya. Feb. 1996. Sennheiser mkh 30/60* via SQN4s to PDR1000.
Here you can access images of Chris Watson. Click on images for high resolution version & please always credit author when used.
CD - 10 tracks - 65 minutes
"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."
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
Artwork: Jon Wozencroft
Mastered by Denis Blackham
CD - 3 Tracks - 54:02
The weather has created and shaped all our habitats. Clearly it also has a profound and dynamic effect upon our lives and that of other animals. The three locations featured here all have moods and characters which are made tangible by the elements, and these periodic events are represented within by a form of time compression.
Track listing:
1. Ol-Olool-O -18' 00"
A fourteen hour drama in Kenya's Masai Mara from 0500h - 1900h on Thursday 17th Oct. 2002
2. The Lapaich -18' 00"
The music of a Scottish highland glen through autumn and into winter during the four months of September to December
3. Vatnajokull -18' 00"
The 10,000 year climatic journey of ice formed deep within this Icelandic glacier and it's lingering flow into the Norwegian Sea.
