After several months of writing, composing and recording, there’s a new CommsBreakdown album ready to hit the streaming platforms! Frequencies Of The Southern Hemisphere is an album of ten tracks of electronica, ambient, downtempo and post-rock, melded with the sounds and environmental moods of Australia.
It’s available now on the CommsBreakdown Bandcamp page and through your favourite music streaming platform, including Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music, Amazon Music, Tidal and Deezer.
The sounds of New South Wales, Australia
This project started out with an idea – or more of a question, in fact. Could I take the sounds of birdlife, nature and the natural world that I heard around me here in Australia and use these noises to form the basis of a CommsBreakdown track?
Could I take the sounds I hear around me and turn it into music?
I’m British by birth, but my family and I moved to Australia almost three years ago, settling in The Southern Highlands, New South Wales, not far from Sydney.
When we first arrived, the sounds I heard around me seemed unusual to British ears. The shrieks of flocks of cockatoos, the early-morning melodies of Australian magpies (or maggies) and the rustling of midnight possums on the roof all sounded different and slightly alien to my British ears. I was used to tweeting house sparrows, the occasional seagull and the distant roar of international jets.
Until you move to a new country, you don’t realise how much you take the aural environment of your home nation for granted. Those unique sounds become so much white noise – a background hum that you take for granted. But having moved to this new location, I was struck by how particular and unique the sounds of Australia are.
If you grew up in Australia, or you’ve ever been on a trip down under, you’ll know the kind of noises I’m talking about. Birdlife proliferates down here, so the dawn chorus is a mix of many birds, some familiar to Europeans, but many looking and feeling much more exotic. In the Southern Highlands, it’s a mix of maggies, cockatoos, corellas, kookaburras, rosellas, ravens, currawongs and many other native species that I’ve yet to learn the names for.
The only time I’d seen a cockatoo, the brilliant white and highly intelligent parrot, was in UK zoos and on the TV. Now I find them roosting in the trees in my garden, or carrying out precarious tight-rope walks along the overhead electricity cable that brings power into the house. Occasionally, I’ll look up to see a bright-red king parrot nibbling on a bud in one of the bushes in the front garden. It still feels slightly other-wordly, but it’s amazing to live this close to such magnificent creatures, and to see them living their life in the wild, outside my window.
Recording the sounds of the Aussie environment
I knew I wanted to include these found sounds of Aussie wildlife in my next album. But how could I capture these noises and fit them into the music?
In the age of the smartphone, we all have a pretty decent field recording unit sitting in our pocket. I used the Google Recorder app that’s a standard app on my Android phone, using it to record different snippets of the sounds I was hearing around me on a day-to-day basis.
Some recordings were longer than others. I would sit on a park bench, or find a quiet spot along a footpath, and just record whatever I could hear. Sometimes that was birds calling, sometimes it was the sounds of people walking along chatting, sometimes it was the pitter-patter of rain and the crashing bangs of thunder as a big storm hit the town.
Once recorded, I could download these raw sound files into my Apple MacBook laptop and start playing around the noises. I use the free Audacity audio editor for most of my sound editing. Usually, this meant removing any sub-200hz rumble from the recordings, editing out any extraneous noises, like wind distorting the recording, and EQing the sound files to make them as clear as possible.
I also cut some of these recordings up into smaller sections; pieces that could be dropped into the compositions to add atmosphere or a certain ambience to the track.
Composing the music around the found sounds
Armed with these field recordings and found sounds of Aussie nature, I could start writing the music to accompany these soundscapes.
Usually, I’d start with the field recordings first, loading these up as separate tracks in Logic Pro, the digital audio workstation (DAW) that I use to compose and record my music. With the found sounds providing the ambience and mood for the track, I then added different synth textures, ambient sounds, drum sounds, rhythms, samples, guitar parts and basslines, to create an electronic soundscape where the found sounds could mix and intertwine with the music.
It didn’t always work the first time. Sometimes the initial music idea didn’t fit the mood of the field recordings, or there were too many musical elements drowning out the natural sounds you were supposed to be hearing. But, generally, the initial found sounds helped to create a feeling that informed and inspired the music.
It’s a way of working that I’ve tried a few times in the past. My track Sonumbulant Saturday from my previous album, Dystopia For Soundtrack Lovers, uses a similar technique to combine field recordings with a musical mood.
But I feel like Frequencies Of The Southern Hemisphere is my most coherent example of merging environmental sounds with electronic music.
Frequencies Of The Southern Hemisphere: breakdown of the album
So, you’ve heard how the album came into being. But what does it actually sound like?
It’s a mix of ambient, electronica, downtempo and post-rock, that merges with the sounds of Aussie wildlife, cascading waterfalls, rolling thunderstorms, laughing kookaburras and the hot summer buzz of evening cicadas. Close your eyes, open your ears and immerse yourself in the ambience of the Southern Hemisphere.
Here’s a breakdown of the ten tracks you’ll find on Frequencies Of The Southern Hemisphere, with explanations of the mood of the track and the sounds you’ll hear.
1. Hot Enough To Fry An Egg
Feel the heat of the midday sun, as cicadas gently buzz and the temperature begins to rise. Cool washes of ambient synthesiser mix with dulcimer melodies as you dive into the shade and watch the heat haze shimmer with a cool drink in your hand.
2. Behold The Dawn Chorus
Feel yourself roused from your slumbers by the early morning calls of kookaburras and Aussie magpies. Knock back a coffee and feel the laidback synths and beats begin to emerge as post-rock guitar and pounding drums wake you from your stupor to start the day.
3. Run Like The Wind!
Time for some exercise! Drag yourself out for a run along the creek, with the metronomic beats and chugging bass guitar keeping time with the rhythm of your feet on the footpath. Listen to the sounds of the birds tweeting and calling from the trees as you fly past.
4. Minnamurra Falls
Take a journey through the ancient Illawarra rainforest and ascend to Minnamurra Falls, as ethereal, ambient synths lead the way. Feel the pulse of the rainforest join with the kick drum as this track morphs into an evocative techno workout to match your heartbeat as you climb.
5. Marimba
Lazy cars pass by and wildlife calls from the trees as infectious marimba melodies swirl around your head. Lose yourself in the groove and the pulsing bassline, as you slide into another sunny summer day down under.
6. Here Comes The Weekend
It’s late afternoon on Friday and the birds are chirruping to welcome in the coming weekend. It’s time to relax and chill to the lazy stand-up bass and hip-hop-style beats and cut-and-paste samples of this downtempo soother.
7. Slipping Into Sunday
You’re halfway through the weekend and sliding into another chilled Sunday with an early morning stroll along the meandering creek and through the rolling fields, as synths rise and fall and the guitars grow in volume to greet the rising sun as it warms the path.
8. The Calm Before The Storm
The clouds are heavy and menacing as the predicted storm rolls in, thunder merging with synth arpeggios and icy piano figures. Listen to the birds calling to each other, ruffled by the humidity and the coming promise of torrential rain, as a lonely lead guitar welcomes the downpour.
9. Rain Down For Eternity
The storm clouds break and soak the land with never-ending rain, as evolving ambient sounds shimmer beneath the pitter patter of rain drops. Tom-toms and an insistent snare drum echo around the landscape, as the beat appears and sends you out dancing into the summer rain.
10. Kookaburra Sunset
Kookaburras come to roost in the trees, as the golden sun begins to dip below the horizon, accompanied by jazz bass and moody vibes. Hip-hop grooves wave goodbye to the daylight and welcome in the night.
You can buy and download the album on the CommsBreakdown Bandcamp page
You can stream the album via all major streaming platforms here
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