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

CD in digipak – 2 tracks – 48:20
Art Direction: Jon Wozencroft
Cover image: Yusuke Murakami

Track Listing:

1. Chris Watson “Midnight at the Oasis” 28:03
The piece is a 28 minute time compression from sunset to sunrise in South Africa’s Kalahari desert and features the dense and harmonic mosaic of delicate animal rhythms recorded in this remote habitat. “Midnight at the Oasis” was first performed at the Marquee in Parliament Street, York, on 13th September 2007 as part of SightSonic’s contribution to the BA Festival of Science. The Kalahari desert is a vast and open space where most of the wildlife is nocturnal. After sunset the dunes, grasses and thorn bushes are patrolled by an emerging alien empire – the insects. Midnight at the Oasis’ presents an unseen soundscape from this beautiful and hostile environment.

2. Chris Watson & Marcus Davidson “The Bee Symphony” 20:00

A project conceived by Chris Watson originally for “Pestival” in 2009 to explore the vocal harmonies between humans and honey bees in a unique choral collaboration around and within the hives of an English country garden. Recorded live at The Rymer Auditorium, Music Research Centre, University of York, England on December 17th 2010 by Tony Myatt, using a Soundfield SPS200 microphone recorded onto an Edirol R4 (surround version), and 2 x Neumann U87 microphones via Grace Microphone Preamplifiers, recorded onto an Edirol R44 (stereo version). Composed and arranged by Marcus Davidson using recordings made by Chris Watson & Mike Harding, and diffused through a 4.1 Genelec system by Chris Watson. The Bee Choir: Dylan de Buitlear, Lisa Coates, Steph Connor, Lewis Marlowe and Shendie McMath. With thanks to Peter Boardman (the event producer), Tom Emmett, Celia Frisby & Bridget Nicholls, who originally commissioned The Bee Symphony.

Marcus Davidson writes: “The first thing that struck me about the bees was how tuneful they were. During the day, their pitch was always based around A an octave below 440, the note we tune orchestras to. I found that the bees formed chords around the A, which varied depending on their mood. I spent time notating these bee chords, or note clusters, and as the bees sing easily in the human vocal range, I then scored the actual bee music for choir.
The sound of humans singing bees was strangely engaging. I thought it was reminiscent of Aboriginal music, perhaps showing how in tune with nature the native civilisations are. In fact, all the chords and ‘tunes’ in The Bee Symphony are taken from actual notes sung by the bees in the field recordings. The score was written so the choir sings exactly with different aspects of the bee song in real time, so hopefully we indeed have humans singing in harmony with bees!”

Chris Watson’s CD ‘El Tren Fantasma’ will be out in September…

Buy Chris Watson & Marcus Davidson “Cross-Pollination” in the TouchShop

www.marcusdavidson.net

The Bee Symphony on BBC Radio 3 | 24th May 2011

This week, The One Show presents a series of films with Chris Watson

Chris Watson, wildlife sound recordist par excellence, has purchased a SoundField ST350 Portable Microphone System for location recording.

Watson, whose career began as a founder member of UK electronic and musique concrete experimentalists Cabaret Voltaire before he became a location sound engineer, has worked closely with respected broadcaster Sir David Attenborough ever since work began on BBC series The Life Of Birds in 1996. In recent years, he has worked as a location recording engineer and sound consultant on feature films such as The Meerkats (Paul Newman’s last film), and National Geographic’s Galapagos, which required his recordings to be made in surround. After years of experimenting with multi-microphone arrays, he began working with SoundField microphones late last year.

You can read more about this here

This year Chris was on location in Northumberland for BBC’s Autumnwatch. He also appeared on Unsprung and posed a sonic quiz to viewers and the studio audience.

The answers to the sonic quiz are:

1) Puffins
2) Grey Seals
3) Deathwatch Beetles

You can read more here

There was also a piece in The Daily Telepgraph on 24th August 2010

Issue #2 of Corridor8, an international contemporary visual art journal with a fresh and original mix of in-depth critical and literary writing, profiles and contemporary art. The second edition is the ‘Borderlands’ edition, Strange Weather, which investigates practice that takes as its starting point the remote, the endgame and life beyond the urban. This issue Corridor8 stretches its northern focus from the far-flung reaches of the UK and beyond and includes the North Midlands, North Scotland, Northern Europe and as far as the Arctic and back again via the Antarctica.

In this issue Elisa Oliver profiles Chris Watson’s creative history, including his work with Cabaret Voltaire, and interviews him from his base at the South Pole about his current work recording for the Attenborough BBC series, The Frozen Planet, to be screened in 2011.

A unique audio recording by Chris Watson, “The Sea Ice Border”, will be given away free with Issue #2 of Corridor8.

This CD will contain two tracks:
1. 89º 24′ N above
2. 89º 24′ N below

Also featured: Guest curator Axel Lapp brings us seven artists/groups to watch in the Conceptual North, Iain Sinclair’s transcribed audio journey Listening for the Corncrake, North Wales-based performance art duo, Heather and Ivan Morrison, Polar interventionist artist Neville Gabie and much more.

For more information on the launch of Corridor8 and our events programme sign up to our newsletter at www.corridor8.co.uk

In 2001 Chris Watson contributed wind recordings to an album by Hazard (BJNilsen)

Wind (Ash International # Ash 6.5) is now available on itunes

You can read more about this album here

On the cover: Chris Watson – Ken Hollings meets the sound recordist and Cabaret Voltaire founder whose mic penetrates the wild places humans can’t reach…

Chris has been interviewed by Line Up (“the only online resource dedicated to audio for broadcast”) – click here to read.

Caught by the River, in association with Heavenly Recordings, is pleased to make available for the first time a collaboration between Chris Watson and the aptly named Doves. This is a remix that Chris has done of the song “Birds Flew Backwards” from Doves’ last album “Kingdom of Rust”.

This remix can be heard over at www.caughtbytheriver.net

You can read an online feature on Chris by Peter Sterling at Green Explorer

In the Film & Music section, there is a page discussing the relationship between birdwatching and music, ‘Twitchin’ the night away’ by Roy Wilkinson… there is also a mention of a project with which Chris involved: Caught by the River

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..

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