Zoologist

No need to check your equipment if you're listening to this record at night: Those are crickets you hear on the recording — or an electronic analog of crickets. Did John Gross and Todd Novosad sample animals for virtually all of the sounds here? Possibly. It's also entirely possible that...

By Tom Murphy

July 10, 2012

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No need to check your equipment if you're listening to this record at night: Those are crickets you hear on the recording — or an electronic analog of crickets. Did John Gross and Todd Novosad sample animals for virtually all of the sounds here? Possibly. It's also entirely possible that this single track of ambient sounds — which evokes the sensation of being next to a swamp, replete with the sound of herons and frogs and other "creatures" — is made of electronic constructs. But it might as well be replicants of dragonflies, bats and mosquitoes à la Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? making a virtual appearance. Gross and Novosad have taken a terrestrial environment and created a sonic model of it; the results are darker and more mysterious than the original, simultaneously calming and slightly unnerving.

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Tom Murphy is a writer, visual artist and musician from Aurora, Colorado. He was a prolific music writer for Westword and a documenter of the Denver music scene.

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