In addition, weather has always inspired composers, experimental musicians, sound artists, and field recordists. One example is Wendy Carlos’ seminal album “Sonic Seasonings”, originally released in 1972 by Columbia Records under her birth name Walter Carlos. The double album contains four ambient tracks, each inspired by a season, that combine field recordings with the sounds of a Moog synthesizer.
“Sonic Seasonings” consists of four long tracks and contains both improvised and composed passages. The tracks feature various natural sounds such as wind, birdsong, and insects. The striking, even psychedelic, soundscapes on “Sonic Seasonings” were created primarily with the Moog synthesizer.
A completely different approach can be found on 2003’s “Weather Report” by Chris Watson, a former member of Cabaret Voltaire and an authority on nature recordings. The sounds of weather on this album, such as rain and thunder, are authentic and come from the places where Watson turned his microphones on people, animals and nature.
Weather plays an essential role in shaping our environment and has a profound effect on us and other animals. Chris Watson took the concept of the “Weather Report” and turned it into three compositions, combining sounds and recordings from different places and moments, including time compression.
The recordings were made in the Masai Mara (“Ol-Olool-O”) in Kenya, a famous game reserve. The title refers to an important water source in Maasai culture. Recordings from the Scottish Highlands were titled ‘The Lapaich”, referring to an energetic and lively traditional Scottish folk dance. “Vatnajökull” takes the listener into the ice and meltwater of Iceland’s largest glacier.
Storm chasers
Over to Mining’s storm chasers and the album “Chimet”. Storm chasers are people who look for extreme weather events such as tornadoes, hurricanes, and thunderstorms. They use meteorological instruments and cameras to track and record these phenomena. Storm chasers play an important role in collecting data and providing timely warnings to communities threatened by severe weather.
The initiative for “Chimet” came from British pianist extraordinaire Matthew Bourne, who is featured on piano, cello and Lintronics Advanced Memorymoog (LAMM) synthesizer. Mining also includes Craig Kirkpatrick-Whitby, who was responsible for the project’s concept, artistic direction, data sourcing, analysis and programming, and PJ Davy, who handled sound design and programming. The three storm chasers collaborated on the composition.
Chimet is a partnership of organizations in southern England that collects and shares meteorological information, with a focus on measuring wind and weather in the Solent, the strait between southern England and the Isle of Wight. The weather station there, the Chichester West Pole Beacon, which is part of Chimet, plays an important role in providing up-to-date and accurate weather data to maritime and air traffic controllers and the general public.
Located at 50° 45′.45 N, 00° 56′.59 W, approximately one mile from the entrance to Chichester Harbor, the instrumentation records both real-time and historical data such as air and water temperature, barometric pressure, wind speed and direction, water depth, wave height, period and frequency, and time of day.
In the eye of the storm
In October 2017, Hurricane Ophelia and Storm Brian devastated the United Kingdom, with wind speeds at times exceeding 100 kilometers per hour. Coastal areas were particularly hard hit. At the same time, huge amounts of sand from the Sahara were blown in this direction, turning the sky orange. In the midst of these turbulent conditions, Mining’s “Chimet” was born. The development of the two storms was recorded over a week using the Chichester West Pole Beacon weather station in the Solent.
Mining then converted the data from these storms into various musical values and parameters such as harmonic range, pitch, density and volume, resulting in a continuous sound design that closely followed the contours of the two storm systems. After several revisions, spontaneous improvised instrumental performances on piano, cello, and synthesizer were added. In this way, seven days of information were translated into 67 minutes and 12 seconds of detailed and evolving music.
“Chimet” opens with “Ophelia”, a 14-minute, 40-second soundscape that depicts the growing and waning system of the eponymous hurricane with long, soft tones and drones and occasional sonar-like piano.
The first dark clouds loom in the following, slightly ominous “Petrichor”. The piano meditatively fills the silence before the storm in “Latent”, a prelude to the location “50° 45′.45 N, 00° 56′.59 W”. For seven minutes and 40 seconds we are literally in the eye of the storm, surrounded by bright piano eruptions, electronic glissandos, dull thumps and circling cello snippets.
This continues into “Arise”. The storm continues to build, layer upon layer of heavy drones piling up into a massive wall of sound, only to slowly subside. This spectacle lasts for twelve minutes and flows seamlessly into “Force 10 Pts 1 & 2”, 16 minutes and 40 seconds of incessant swelling and waning, intensely powerful and hypnotic sonic storms.
Then comes the desolation of “Debris”, the wreckage left behind, scattered and broken. A synthesizer gently oscillates over deep earth tones and slowly fades away. Silence returns.
Ophelia and Brian were undeniably a devastating couple. But the mesmerizing and compelling soundscape of Mining’s “Chimet” also captures the majestic power of natural phenomena that we, as humans, would do well to approach with respect.
Digital artist Sock Baeus Redding, in collaboration with graphic designer Oli Bentley, created a visual representation in the album artwork of the original 2,016 lines of source data streams collected every five minutes between 00:30am on October 16, 2017 and 00:25am on October 23. Each of the 504 LP sleeves contains a unique vertical visualization stripe and individual timestamp corresponding to a 20-minute period of the storm sequence.
Mining – Chimet
The Leaf Label
Limited Edition 2LP & CD (both limited to 504 copies worldwide)
Releasedatum: 17-05-2024
