New Ambient Techno

The success of Interspecies' Belly of the Whale Project, was quickly followed-up by a collaboration with the German music software company, Native Instruments, which culminated in the design of a wildly popular pavilion at the 2005 Japan EXPO. Our pavilion provided a multimedia tour focused on the status and behavior of several endangered whale species, and showcasing a musical instrument that visitors could play and read and watch, to create their own music entirely from underwater animal calls.

Both of these music projects prompted me to continue composing digital music based on natural sound samples including many birds and whale calls, lobsters, walrus, plus the sounds of wind, rain, breathing, and falling water. I have recorded enough of this ambient techno to consider releasing a CD sometime in 2008 or 2009.

Humpy's Raga exemplifies this format. The piece adheres to a classical Indian structure, although all sounds are oceanic in origin, including humpback whales, dolphins, sperm whales, belugas, bowhead whales, waves, fish, and lobsters.

Thunderbird suggests a thunderstorm, with a melody sampled from many North American birds, especially 4 different dove species.

For over 20 years, Interspecies produced a communication program with the wild orcas that reside in Johnstone Strait British Columbia. Each year, our interspecies objective became more difficult to fuilfill, as the strait gradually transformed from a wilderness area into a very noisy waterway filled with ship traffic. Today, we are rarely able to record the orcas without also hearing the throb of some nearby ship. Final Calm is my attempt to recreate, musically, this newly urbanized environment of Johnstone Strait, with its orcas, lag dolphins, fast currents, plus cruise ships and freighters rumbling through the area every few minutes. At one point in the piece, you can hear samples of the same cruise ship both below water (very loud engine noise), and above water a dance orchestra).

Orca Jazzy is one of the two or three best examples of realtime interspecies recorded during Interspecies' 25 year tenure of producing live music with the wild orcas of Johnstone Strait. What you hear, is mostly the way one musical relationship developed over a ten minute span in 1988, recorded entirely underwater. I have added a slight bit of extra rhythm, although even these sounds were sampled from orca echolocation clicks, to accentuate the natural rhythm that pushed this remarkable interaction. If this music ever attracts a record label, this composition will be the featured piece.