"The recording immediately jumped out at me with its' chattering insects, bees and voices, and a little noise.

"I wanted to draw tones from the buzzing and clicks to make something that felt like you were exploring the world through resonance and reflection.

"I did a little live modular jamming to explore the material first - which led to this idea of using the bees buzzing as a gateway into this alternative world and back again:
https://www.youtube.com/live/LmFAG4Ry708

"It's like you just got lost for a moment, briefly seeing the world a different way."

Insect hotel in Goettingen reimagined by Warren Anthony.

"Originating from the ghosts of urban interactions, the field recording was completely taken apart. Fragments were stretched and reshaped into drones, others reduced to abstract one-shots that sit somewhere between percussion and texture.

"Everything was composed and arranged in Ableton Live 12 with Push 3, and built entirely on instinct. No plan, no concept, just chasing what sounded right until the piece came together. The result sits in dark, dubby territory, with an edge of spiky fuzz that reflects the source material more than any deliberate decision."

Bremen bridge soundscape reimagined by Alistair Petersen.

Recording inside three different zones of the Palm House at Tallinn Botanic Garden, with the natural reverby acoustic of the space, piped birdsong, and the sounds of various fans and heating devices.

Recorded in Tallinn, Estonia by Cities and Memory.

Great-tailed grackles force their existence into urban spaces. Every dusk during Arizona's mild winters, these birds congregate and chatter for two hours, avian voices intermingling with bustling downtown activity. This sample features the grackles at their peak, a hundred birds shouting to be heard over one another. Yet, they share an uneasy coexistence with the city: local businesses hire people to scare away the grackles with laser pointers, while a loud siren frightens off the birds in the recording, causing them to fly across the roadside canopy in a fretful murmuration. Eventually, the grackles settle, and they gabber until falling asleep, voices quieting into a gentle din.

This recording was created for a study on great-tailed grackle roost vocalisation behaviour.

Recorded in Tempe, AZ, USA by Brandon Ligon.

"The original field recording of the botanic gardens in Tallinn, Estonia, reminded me of how much I enjoy visiting these spaces, unusual and exotic flora from around the world in a little capsule… some rare specimens may only exist in these manmade protective bubbles…

"For the project I extracted 6 sections of the original audio, between 5 and 25 seconds in length… (No other audio was used). I processed these on my iPad with various granular synthesis apps (Fluss, Tardigrain, Outgrowth, etc.)to dissect, disassemble, rearrange and reconstruct into a new composition.

"As well as adding further effects; delay, filter, distortion and reverb etc. to create 3 separate granular textured layers which I then combined together to create the final track. Some eq/compression to finalise.

“The recursive manipulation; chopping, stretching and distorting of the original audio, creates a sort of dystopian cybernetic jungle, a cacophony of alien and mechanical, yet almost familiar sounds, echo around this synthetic environment…”

Botanic garden in Tallinn reimagined by id_23.

"In the recording that forms the basis of the composition, two elements act as tonic and signal, respectively: the sound of the grackles and a loud siren. The siren, a disturbing element, has been time-stretched to transform it into brushstrokes of colour, thus entering a new temporal and gestural dimension. These brushstrokes of colour unfold against the background sound of the grackles."

| Nicola Fumo Frattegiani

Bees swarming around their insect hotel in a small city park and birds chirping in the background.

Recorded in Goettingen, Germany by Gilberto Mazzoli.

Under the Wilhelm-Kaisen Bruecke, with trams overhead on the bridge, bicycles and walkers passing us, and the natural reverb sounds of such a large concrete structure heard from beneath.

Recorded in Bremen, Germany by Cities and Memory.