Excellent field recording release from The London Sound Survey, i.e. Ian M. Rawes. Rawes died in 2021, just two years after the release of Thames, his sound-map exploration of the Thames area made for this same label. The Thames record hinted at Rawes’s very real fear about the “rate of change” in the world (not just in London), and that record contained a large number of sounds which have since simply vanished from the globe – some of them in a very short space of time. This rapid change concern does apply directly to wildlife and climate change, for sure, but there may be a more profound sadness at the root of Rawes’s poignant observations.
With this new record From Dusk Till Dawn (PERSISTENCE OF SOUND PS008), we’re almost 100% back in the world of wildlife and nature, whereas Thames exhibited a blend of nature with man-made sounds (for instance, a siren at an oil refinery). You’ve only got to hear the record and to read Rawes’ notes to instantly realise that here was a man who had deep knowledge of the area – in this instance, parts of East Anglia, including Lakenheath Fen, which is an RSPB bird sanctuary on the border between Norfolk and Suffolk. He’s out there camping, getting out of his sleeping bag at unearthly hours, walking alone in the cold, carrying his microphone and tape machine, encountering forest life and bird life; one of the things that comes over to me is his knowledge of the terrain, his sense of direction, detailed understanding of the lives and habits of certain species of birds, all of which he appears to know intimately. He knows what the birds are, he knows where they’re going, and why they’re doing it. One almost gets the impression that he’s acquired all this knowledge just by putting in the time and observing – looking, but also listening. Through these eight selected tracks of his field recordings, he invites us to do the same. There’s also a coherent linear time-line to the whole release, as pointed out by Iain Chambers’ notes, and we follow “the journey of natural sounds from dusk until dawn”. I’m no great outdoorsman myself, which I why I often feel with this record that we’re hearing things we normally don’t get to hear – you literally have to get up very early in the morning if you want to be a witness to these natural events.
We’d do well to leave the last word to Rawes himself – “at this hour, it sounds as though the world belongs to the birds alone”. I only wish this were true, because ever since the stupid decision to abandon the European Union, this country has also abandoned a large number of environmental regulatory protections, leaving the countryside and its wildlife even more vulnerable to the depredations of rapacious property developers. As such, this record (though beautiful) also leaves me with a terrible melancholy. From 5th September 2022.