Biodukt, one of our favorite field recording albums of all time, was released in March of 2020, the week the whole world shut down.  The timing could not have been more fortuitous; the album, which tracked the sounds of Italian and Slovenian forests from sunrise to sunset, was a reminder of all that was still good in the world and had not yet been taken away. Nokturno arrives at a different time,…

Martina Testen and Simon Šerc‘s Biodukt is one of the finest field recording works we’ve ever covered, making our overall Top 20 in 2020.  Earlier this year, we included the album in our feature, The 25 Best Spring Albums of All Time.  We even coined a phrase that ended up being part of the subsequent exhibition:  forest bathing for the ears.  Suffice it to say that we fell in love with the…

During this global crisis, we need reminders of the great eternal.  Biodukt is an intensely soothing release, a day spent in the forest from sunrise to sunset, shared in the space of exactly one hour.  The five track titles ~ Sunrise, Morning, Afternoon, Evening, Sunset ~ may be markers of time, but the forest has its own rhythms, none of which are connected to the clock.

The sun comes up; the…

XARQ - NGC6559

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Simon Šerc ~ Bora Scura

Since everyone has wind, one would expect to hear an overload of quality wind recordings.  Yet the opposite is true.  Simon Šerc‘s Bora Scura joins an extremely elite group, led by Lawrence English’s Viento and Daniel Menche’s Wind.  Meteorologists, take note. Yet while everyone has wind, not everyone has wind like this.  It’s more likely during a nor’easter or blizzard.  But in…