Perhaps I shouldn't have favourites, but there are few artists that I love more than Cosmo Sheldrake. Fiercely creative, a little bit bonkers and almost certainly a musical magician, he makes music that is completely unlike anything else I listen to. His last record Wake Up Calls (read my review here) saw him making music from the birdsong of birds on the amber and red list in the UK - and for his latest project, he's taking us to the ocean soundscape. Oh yes.
New track Bathed In Sound is served up as the first taster of new EP Wild Wet World, which is due for release on 26th April via Tardigrade Records. The track features Cosmo alongside recordings of humpback whales, sperm whales, sounds of a bleached coral reef off Lizard Island, long horn sculpin, oyster toad fish and a buck-toothed parrot fish. You might ask what they're getting out of their work on the track - and here comes the BRILLIANT bit - through the lovely folk at EarthPercent, the Earth (yep, the ~actual~ Earth) is earning royalties from this project. So so COOL!!
Cosmo describes the track as "a song about trying to imagine myself as a whale floating in the ocean, immersed in a liquid medium full of sound, surrounded by plankton and the immense wild wetness of the ocean." There's a live video below...
Cosmo describes the EP as "a homage to the ocean" - it's composed entirely of recordings of animals and the sonic worlds which they inhabit, some of which are marine biologist Steve Simpson's recordings. Brill science incoming: Simpson's research suggests that playing the sound of healthy coral reefs to dying reefs can help tempt back keystone species and restore health to these complex ecosystems. Ooft.
Talking about the EP, which has been a labour of love over several years, Cosmo shares: "I have pieced it together slowly over a period of about ten years. It features the sounds of humpback whales singing, sperm whales clicking, Weddell seals courting, coral reefs spluttering, bucktoothed parrot fish crunching, an oyster toad fish grunting, pistol shrimp snapping, long horned sculpins honking, blue whales lamenting, and haddock drumming, and a rare recording of the voices of the UK's last remaining killer whale population who, along with their unique dialect are doomed to extinction as they are no longer fertile due to chemical contaminates in their waters."
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