Starlings
Re imagination of Wild Garlic
March 2023

As an audio artist my days are filled with the sounds of the things I see. I have always been acutely aware of the mass of sound and noises that surround me everyday, even in very quiet places. To me the world has always been a hum, static, fizz to the ears, drones, and underlying miasma of noise, even in the seemingly most tranquil of places. Constant noise and static- where things not only have a physical shape but also have a sound wave. Animate and inanimate sing songs. Their songs and my sound image combine.

I also spend most of my days taking apart a field recording and by simple processing and many hours, I like to transform the original into something else, to reimagine it both sonically and visually and this is what I did with Wild Garlic.

There is a huge Sycamore tree that straddles several gardens and it is home to many birds. Crows and Magpies have built large scrappy nests in the upper reaches, while the little birds flit amongst the branches looking for food. During the winter months it is the perch of many cantankerous starlings, chattering, fighting, squawking, feathers bristling and beaks clapping and as quickly as they arrived, spooked by nothing at all, they en masse take flight in noisy harmony.

It is this sound picture that I tried to recreate after watching them one afternoon, using the Wild Garlic audio track as well as using field recordings of wind through trees and starlings as well as the midi file and manipulation / processing of the original audio.

However, it doesn’t quite reach the intensity of noise and movement of the original starlings.

Nothing can match their noise levels.

Best listened through headphones but beware loud sudden sounds.