Sound mosaics for a broken world

Field recordings gathered in chalk grassland nature reserves in Dorset, UK, during the summer of 2025

Recordings of a sound installation situated in the ancient woodland of Holt Forest National Nature Reserve, Dorset, UK. The installation featured a series of piano chords diffused on an array of 16 small stereo speaker systems, in an attempt to explore the harmonics of a forest.

A sound mosaic recorded at the Carrifran Wildwood, southern Scotland, on an event to mark the 25th anniversary of the first tree planting on the site. The area was formerly bare hillside, having been deforested in antiquity through the results of thousands of years of sheep and cattle farming. The Wildwood project has successfully established native woodland across the entire subcatchment, and as a result many species of bird, insect and other organisms have colonised the site, as can be heard on these recordings.

An interview with Thomas Haynes, who is both a plant ecologist and an experimental musician, working under the moniker Grasslands. The conversation explores how his interests coincide, in multiple interesting ways.

A soundwalk around Holt Heath National Nature Reserve in Dorset, UK, during the Spring of 2025.

An interview with the environmental sound artists Blanc Sceol (Stephen Shiell and Hannah White), who work on the boundaries between sound, listening and performance, while fostering a reciprocal relationship with ecological communities. Their compositions, interventions and performances are strongly grounded in their sense of place, an an awareness of how human impacts are shaping environments. Much of their recent work has focused on rivers, especially the Channelsea river in central London. Further details at https://www.blancsceol.co.uk/