Mystic whale love
Jan 17, 2023, 09:36 PM
"My collaborator Hansine and I were surprised by the expressiveness of the Bowhead Whale call and how the spacing between the calls seemed to be awaiting a response. Our idea initially was to have a conversation with the whale, with Hansine's vocals personifying a responding whale.
"We were recording alone in a cabin in the hills of Santa Cruz with just ourselves, a bass, a drum machine, and the sample and the song came together in just a few hours, eventually becoming a sort of love song. It ended up making sense, as Bowhead Whales are typically most vocal in mating season, and otherwise are often solitary, and maybe lonely?
"Based on the love song aspect and the species latin name Balaena mysticetus, we named the track. The whale call can be heard looping throughout the track, is sampled to create percussive elements, and also feeds a granular synthesizer to create textures."
Bowhead whale reimagined by Avery Bick.
Part of the Polar Sounds project, a collaboration between Cities and Memory, the Helmholtz Institute for Functional Marine Biodiversity (HIFMB) and the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI). Explore the project in full at http://citiesandmemory.com/polar-sounds.
"We were recording alone in a cabin in the hills of Santa Cruz with just ourselves, a bass, a drum machine, and the sample and the song came together in just a few hours, eventually becoming a sort of love song. It ended up making sense, as Bowhead Whales are typically most vocal in mating season, and otherwise are often solitary, and maybe lonely?
"Based on the love song aspect and the species latin name Balaena mysticetus, we named the track. The whale call can be heard looping throughout the track, is sampled to create percussive elements, and also feeds a granular synthesizer to create textures."
Bowhead whale reimagined by Avery Bick.
Part of the Polar Sounds project, a collaboration between Cities and Memory, the Helmholtz Institute for Functional Marine Biodiversity (HIFMB) and the Alfred Wegener Institute, Helmholtz Centre for Polar and Marine Research (AWI). Explore the project in full at http://citiesandmemory.com/polar-sounds.