Wild Wet World

Sheldrake’s previous album was the excellent Wake Up Calls, featuring music and sound set to birdsong, in order to ‘help us become more aware of the glorious polyphonic soundworlds that surround us before many of these voices become extinct.’ Three years on comes this compact new set of recordings, from below the surface of the waters, fused with sound patterns and a vocal from the human realm. Wild Wet World promises more ocean-going fun and variety than most non-aquatic orchestras – ‘humpback whales singing, sperm whales clicking, weddell seals courting, coral reefs spluttering, shrimp snapping… blue whales lamenting,’ even the sound of ‘haddock drumming’. All the musicians are natives of endangered habitats. Sheldrake recorded some himself with aquarian hydrophones, others come from Monterey Bay Aquarium and the US veteran soundscape ecologist Bernie Krause. They are fused with his own music from above the surface, complete with lyrics and a well-spoken vocal style on album opener ‘Bathed in Sound’ that’s reminiscent of Brian Eno’s occasional forays behind the mic. The rest of it is instrumental, or ‘sung’ in the languages of the sea, and full of strange sonic emanations from the depths and shallows. Half his royalties will go to various charities and organisations.