Part 1

Name: Peter Walker
Occupation: Producer, multi-instrumentalist, composer
Nationality: American   
Current Release: Mia Doi Todd and David Ralicke join Peter Walker for new Arthur King release Changing Landscapes (Zompopa), out via AKP.

If you enjoyed this interview with Arthur King and would like to find out more about their music, visit their official website. The band is also on Instagram, Facebook, and twitter. For an even deeper look into his work, check out our previous Peter Walker of Arthur King interview.

When did you first start getting interested in field recordings?

My interest in field recordings began a handful of years ago, when I realized they can be a crucial tool for connecting us to our surroundings. Field recordings can serve as a catalyst for connection in our largely disconnected lives. This was the spark that sent me on my field recording journey.

Before going any further though, as far as field recordings are concerned, I think it’s good to start by simply saying that a microphone can be a very powerful tool.

It’s also important to address, up front, what can be problematic about field recordings. Sounds are gathered. They are captured. They are taken, often without context and sometimes even without permission, from spaces and places that we, the recordists, are visiting. Unless we’re recording the sounds of our own backyard, or our own dwelling, say, we risk trespassing onto others’ lands. Of course, we in the U.S. can never really escape that reality, that we’re permanently trespassing on stolen land. In any event, these are important reminders when pointing a microphone somewhere.

It’s also helpful to realize that our perspective is very, very narrow, especially when it comes to sound. Most non-human beings—animals, insects and such—are hearing vastly different things than we are. Their sonic landscape looks amazingly unlike our own, with each being’s perception defining their own respective spaces. It makes sense, of course, to focus on what we’re capable of focusing on, but it’s humbling to know that there’s a lot more going on than we’re aware of.

Field recording in Costa Rica wasn’t without these pitfalls, concerns, and considerations. Before proceeding with this project, we sourced, hired and ultimately befriended a local naturalist and eco-biologist who knows the jungle in such a profound way, that even without microphones or cameras, I was experiencing, through his knowledge and education, a deeply rich and new perspective of that space.

It taught me that learning about what I’m hearing can add new and important dimensions of understanding.

Which artists, approaches, albums or performances using field recordings captured your imagination in the beginning?

In 2013 I began seriously studying writings by Carl Jung, and was intrigued by his intentional listening practice, and how through listening he came to
understand certain dimensions of the natural world. He basically found listening to be a window into our own psychological processes.

Jung suggests that by aligning and opening our senses away from our usual, intellectual filter, we can experience the vast world of the unknown, the unconscious, and even the numinous. Brian Eno brought this type of listening into the musical realm by creating pieces that connect you to the listening space you’re in, because of their ambient nature.

Ambient music, ambient listening, has been a source of inspiration and connection for me since that time.

[Read our Brian Eno interview]

An interest in field recordings can often be part of a deeper engagement with sound. Can you talk a bit about your interest in or fascination for sound, the effect it has on you?

Sound has a unique ability to resonate with our irrational mind, the place of emotional and somatic experience. Perhaps the pathway to the psyche through the ears is faster, or less encumbered by our rational mind than that of the eyes. We also feel sound.

Likely all of us humans have sounds that relate to memories. Whether it was the first time, at a young age, we heard a certain artist (for me: Neil Young), or going way back to the heartbeat and blood flow we undoubtedly heard in the womb … sound remains a catalyst for deep experience. The attribute of sound to touch us so deeply makes intentional, or attentive listening a very special and fruitful way to engage with our surroundings.

Even in prepared, pre- meditated music, the combinations of notes and harmonics that moves us in a certain way can be something that is hard to fully quantify. We just know it when we hear it, or feel it.

Personally, I have a love / hate relationship with my sensitivity to sound. I’m the guy who plugs his ears when an ambulance drives by with its sirens on. I’m also constantly listening to things that I’m guessing most people tune out, and I’m making connections between these obscure and unrelated sources, like the cadence of a distant landscapers’ chainsaw as it relates to a bird chirping in my backyard in Los Angeles, or ambient, background music at a restaurant as it might couple with the muffled conversation coming from a table near mine.

I enjoy finding these types of interesting and unfolding sonic relationships that are always presenting themselves.

Working predominantly with field recordings and sound can be a very incisive step / transition. Aside from musical considerations, there can also be personal motivations for looking for alternatives. Was this the case for you, and if so, in which way?

I was experimenting with total improvisation and chance processes, doing
studies in the recording studio involving synchronicity, and generally exploring how to foster unintended occurrences in music making. I wanted to push further into improvisation and chance, and found field recordings to be the perfect accompanist.

Field recordings inherently contain chance and unintentionality, because we don’t know what we’re going to hear in a given space, in a given moment. The sounds unfold on their own. So, it seemed a natural step to involve this type of dynamic sound into the improvisation experimentation.

Improvising with field recordings also had an unexpected outcome of connecting me, in a deeper sense than I had ever experienced, to the recorded sounds, and therefore to the physical space they came from.

Creating alongside a field recording is an incredible way to interact with a space. The process necessitates the recorded sound to occupy a shared, creative space. We’re not just hearing it at face value, if that makes sense. What’s more, manipulating the recorded sounds through real-time improvisation creates another layer of interaction.

How would you describe what happens when you start attentively listening to field recordings?

Attentive listening on its own is such a powerful tool. You can do it, right now, in front of your computer or phone, or wherever you may be. Take a few seconds, stop thinking, and just listen for a while. The sonic landscape is alive, constantly unfolding, and always ready to be ingested. This type of exercise quickly feels like meditation, and yet we’re simply experiencing what is happening around us, and within us, just by listening.

Attentively listening to field recordings is like watching an uncut video—it’s a re-experience of something. It’s an invitation for reinterpretation, and connection with the sound.

What, would you say, are the key ideas behind your approach to music and art?

Process and connection are my core values when it comes to art. I use creative processes as ways to connect to and understand my surroundings, and myself.

Total improvisation, even without involving field recordings, connects us to the space we are in, and the others in that space. The immediacy of total improvisation opens us to experiencing our surroundings. We have to be totally present with what’s happening.

Insert field recordings into the mix, and we’re reacting to, and connecting with, something more-than-human. The unexpected or unknown factor increases, and so does the connection to the unexpected and unknown parts of ourselves.

As creative goals and technical abilities change, so does the need for different tools of expression, from instruments via software tools and recording equipment. Can you describe this path for you personally starting from your first studio/first instruments and equipment? What motivated some of the choices you made in terms of instruments/tools/equipment over the years?

Early on it was a 4-track recorder that got me started with capturing sounds and playing with overdubbing.

I was a teenager writing and recording songs about trying to buy beer, and getting together with friends. Really profound stuff! But at the time it felt great to see an idea through by overdubbing, and to get it on tape so I could share it with others. Over the years I’ve continued to view my equipment as tools to help encourage or allow for expression. Most recently, the tools have served to simply amplify my senses. Headphones and a microphone, as I said before, are very powerful instruments. They bring to light hidden perspectives.

These days I keep my equipment relatively simple, meaning basic analog (when possible) tools to aid in recording and performing improvisationally. A delay pedal. A sampler. A keyboard. Even with a simple tool, the combined possibilities far out-stretch what I’ll need from it, so I like to keep it pretty basic and just play around with all the opportunities in front of me.

I don’t want to be interacting with a computer program or anything like that when I’m trying to be creative. I try to stay in the imaginative part of the brain as much as possible.