Midsummer Nights

by Bernie Krause & Ruth Happel

Here's a nice one for the weekend, continuing our ongoing series with posts of nature and environmental recordings. If you want to give yourself a special treat, listen to "Midsummer Nights" at night, in a darkened room, putting your player on "repeat". A wonderful experience.

While many may not have heard of Bernie Krause, they surely have heard his work. He's a synthesizer pioneer who worked with The Beatles and The Rolling Stones and who has contributed to the soundtracks for "Apocalypse Now" and other major movies, Krause is also the world's most accomplished student and recorder of natural sound, with a veritable truckload of interesting releases on labels like "Wild Sanctuary" and "Miramar". He has recorded gorillas at Diane Fosse's camp in Rwanda, orangutans in Sumatra, polar bears in Alaska, and ants in the desert of the American Southwest. I you want to dive deeper into this subject, I highly recommend his book "Into a Wild Sanctuary: A Life in Music and Natural Sound", widely available in an easily affordable edition.

Nycticorax nycticorax - Night Heron

Track 1 East: 30:02
A barred owl, eastern screech owl and night heron punctuate the evening chorus of crickets and cicadas of the Adirondack Mountains in the Eastern United States. Recording by Ruth Happel.

Song of the Screech Owl

Track 2 West: 30:31
Bullfrogs and a great horned owl sing solo against the rhythmic pulse of the insect chorus in the Cascade Mountains of Northern California. Recording by Bernie Krause.

Great Horned Owl

The first cut, recorded in the Adirondacks by Ruth Happel, espresses an evening biophony characteristic of an Eastern U.S. soundscape after night-fall. Compare the cricket rhythms, textures, and sonorities with those recorded in the West by Bernie Krause in the Cascade Mountains of Northern California. Many think of evening sounds in a generalized way. Yet, careful listening tells a very different story. This recording is a perfect example of biophonies that reveal a sense of place beyond the typical visual experiences humans normally encounter. The eastern evening biophony recorded by Happel (cut 1) represents a particular spot whose voice can be heard nowhere else on the planet. The cricket orchestra defines it in much the same way one can discern the difference between the music of Bach and that of the Beatles. Likewise, the Krause recording (Cut 2), is a perfect definition of that particular territory, replete with bullfrogs and an occasional distant great-horned owl. Yet, both cuts evoke a clear sense of time - an evening special to those creatures, human and non-human, alike, who occupy the same respective habitats. (Bernie Krause)

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