Cosmo Sheldrake (“Cuckoo Song”), an England-based musician that incorporates natural sounds into his music, has released an EP of three songs.
TOAST, a British clothing company that promotes environmental sustainability in an industry dominated by unsustainable fast fashion, commissioned the songs based on their seasonal theme of rewilding and hoped Sheldrake would create ambient, relaxing music based on it.
Sheldrake’s eccentric style uses sounds found in nature, having songs with major beats being made entirely out of bat echolocation or of the sound of cuckoo birds singing. While Sheldrake does have more normal production styles in songs like “Come Along,” his signature style is the incorporation of the natural world.
The first song on the EP, which is available on SoundCloud, is titled “Air.” It is composed using the birdsong of British birds, the calls of pipistrelle bats and horseshoe bats. The song is very light, feeling like a walk through the woods on a comfortable, sunny day. To be frank, it sounds like something out of “The Legend of Zelda,” like an ocarina song. As all of Sheldrake’s songs are, it is a bit wacky, to say the least.
“Soil,” the second song of the EP, takes the listener to the ground using recordings of plants and fungi. According to Sheldrake’s Instagram caption when he released the song, he recorded the bioelectrical activity of plants and fungi, along with using hydrophones to record plant roots. He also recorded stridulation of insects, using it to produce unique beats and tones. Stridulation is when an insect rubs parts of its body together to produce a sound like how crickets chirp, “Soil” brings the listener much closer, with muted sounds giving a feeling of being in a tight spot without the claustrophobia. The song also feels much darker, less in a spooky or depressing way and more so with a feeling of darkness or lack of light. Sounds echo and drip, giving an image of wet cavern walls crawling with tiny life thriving in a world alien to our own.
The crème de la crème of the EP is hands-down “Ocean,” which was made using the calls of many animals and natural ambient sounds. As Sheldrake said in his Instagram post, “Ocean” uses the sounds of longhorn sculpins, bucktoothed parrot fish, Norwegian cod breeding, blue whales, humpback whales, seals and many other natural sounds. The most interesting of the sounds are used in a process called “acoustic restoration,” the sounds of a healthy coral reef, such as fish swimming or dolphins chirping, to restore damaged coral reefs by attracting beneficial organisms.
Usually, damaged coral reefs are quickly colonized by algae, and playing the sounds of a thriving ecosystem causes organisms that would consume the algae to come, which in turn produces a healthy ecosystem. “Ocean” flows gently at times, but with a true depth to it to showcase the sheer enormity of the seas while shining a light on the life found there.
Sheldrake’s weird, fantastical musical style is perfect for this EP and for the clothing company that commissioned it. By using specific species from a range of environments and natural processes like water flowing, Sheldrake builds a beautiful soundscape of a marvelous world that reconnects the listener with our own.
Image from Cosmo Sheldrake via. YouTube
