Termites Dream Birds

In the spirit of David Tudor's Rainforest pieces, but the wrong animal is singing.

Recorded with hand soldered contact mic (I made it out of a buzzer like from a smoke alarm), a sheet of paper, a plastic ruler, a desk, a rubber band, an xacto knife, a wooden pencil box, a toothbrush, and a latex rubber eraser.

I scraped things against each other in various complementary patterns and recorded the sounds.

Multi tracked in ardour. A light EQ and reverb added to the master mix.

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posted by idiopath (1 comment total)

The textures on this track are really great. I can't decide whether I'm happy or not that you revealed how you recorded it. If I had come into listening this blind, with only the title, I would have pictured a little, tiny mic inside a termite mound, and it would have been deeply disturbing. Actually, it would only be disturbing until 1:18 when one of the workers started opening little, tiny cans of schlitz with old-time-y removable pop tops for all the returning soldiers, and the mental image would be almost cute, the pale little drones enjoying a brew. Then at around 3:45, word would reach the chamber that an aardvark tongue was quickly making its way down the corridor, and pandemonium would break loose.
posted by umbú at 8:17 PM on July 6, 2010 [1 favorite]