the man who loved dead birds

old photos :

"there was once a man who collected old photo books of animals,

he would pour over them with such love, he loved the animals.  15

years into said business, he realized all the animals he was admiring

 were dead....  and he lost his mind"

charles jackston longbreeches

salvation through purification (doom track)

excerpt from ingenting 3

birds for framework radio (2012.02.12)

a selection of bird related recordings curated by invisible birds

(matthew swiezynski and chief librarian sir arthur de eriomém)

on resonance : framework radio - show #362: 2012.02.12*

table of contents :

1. jonathan coleclough - from makruna minya - icr / siren records - 2004
track - makruna
2. dr. roger s. payne - from songs of the humpback whale (modifié par arthur de eriomém)
3. jean-claude roché - oiseaux du vénézuéla - edwards records - 1973 (w/ whale background)
4. thomas köner & yannick dauby from une topographie sonore: col de vence - mille plateaux - 2003
5. ingenting kollektiva - bird melody from side b of fragments of night looped - invisible birds - 2011
6. jean-claude roché - rossignols: a nocturne of nightingales - frémeaux & associés, 1993
track - a wood in the le de france
7. vikki jackman - whispering pages - faraway press - 2008
track - dreams
8. akio suzuki - odds and ends - hören - 2002
track - ta yu ta i #2 (birds and bird-like)
9. jonathan coleclough - from cake - siren records / robot records - 1998
10. douglas quin - antartica - miramar - 1998
tracks : wind harps from the taylor valley, canada glacier, and emperor penguins (ending : modifié par arthur de eriomém)
11. olivier messiaen's le chocard des alpes from catalogue d'oiseaux (modifié par arthur de eriomém)

(thank you to patrick mcginley for involving us in his framework radio)

thirty-fifth one flew

errol morris - vernon, florida - 1982
cinematography by ned burgess

listen to that sound.
hear that sound?
getting in and out of trees?

invisible birds (mocking bird)

it is where the great magnolia shoots up its majestic trunk, crowned with evergreen leaves, and decorated with a thousand beautiful flowers, that perfume the air around; where the forests and fields are adorned with blossoms of every hue; where the golden orange ornaments with gardens and groves; where bignonias of various kinds interlace their climbing stems around the white-flowered stuartia, and mounting still higher, cover the summits of the lofty trees around, accompanied with innumerable vines, that here and there festoon the dense foliage of the magnificent woods, lending to the vernal breeze a slight portion of the perfume of their clustered flowers, where a genial warmth seldom forsakes the atmosphere; where berries and fruits of all descriptions are met with at every step;- in a word, kind reader, it is where nature seems to have paused, as when passed over the earth, and opening her stores, to have strewed with unsparing hand the diversified seeds from which have sprung all the beautiful and splendid forms which i should in vain attempt to describe, that the mocking bird should have fixed its abode, there only that its wondrous song should be heard.

the mocking bird - turdus polyglottus - john james audobon - writings and drawings - the library of america - 1999

(images by johannes von vogelbaum, of tree light, tree sounds and murmurs from the perspective of a small invisible bird)

the walls are excellent & high & upon an horizontal line

in 1795, when shirley, massachusettes, was a community of 200 shakers living on three thousand acres, an outside observer recorded, "the walls are excellent & high & upon an horizontal line, & as straight as they can be laid."

inspired by visionary experiences, the gift drawings bridge the heavenly and the earthly spheres.
...imaging heaven as a perfectly balanced array of circles, squares, and rectangles that signified walls, architectural structures, and roads (cat. 38). others depicted delicately rendered trees, fruits, flowers, and other natural forms, as well as shaker meeting houses, chairs, tables, clocks, chains, necklaces, and other human-made structures and objects, rendered more decorative than those common in daily life on earth. other gift drawings are replete with esoteric symbols, including masonic symbols such as the all-seeing eye and checkerboard patterns. gift drawings are also typically distinguished by their precise graphic quality, which links words elegantly written in upright, noble scripts with their delicately rendered visual counterparts as unified elements of thoroughly structured designs. portraying heaven as an idealized image of the earth, the gift drawings exemplified the shakers' view of their community...

images & text from shaker gift drawings and gift songs, the drawing center, ucla hammer, & university of minnesota press, 2001

view titles of images here ***

another fine book to consider:
shaker design, whitney norton - whitney museum of american art, 1986

invisible birds (tiny feet extending)

what birds plunge through is not the intimate space in which you see all forms intensified. (out in the open, you would be denied your self, would disappear into that vastness.)
space reaches from us and construes the world: to know a tree, in its true element, throw inner space around it, from that pure abundance in you. surround it with restraint. it has no limits. not till it is held in your renouncing is it truly there.

rainer maria rilke - uncollected poems, 1922-1926 - translated by stephen mitchell
page 173

invisible birds (the lost estate)

sometimes, for a few steps, my feet are resting on a bank of fine sand. and in the silence, i can hear a bird: i think it's a nightingale, but i must be wrong because they only sing in the evenings... this bird is relentlessly repeating the same phrase: voice of the morning, a recital in the shade, a delicious invitation to a journey between the elms. invisible and obstinate, it seems to be accompanying me through the leaves.
alain-fournier, the wanderer

(photos by matthew swiezynski)

birds, vinyl, drone and graceful degradations

- alio die & saffron wood - corteggiando le messi - hic sunt leones, 2006
verging of many types of music: classical, (world & new age), drone and especially the non-music (his trademark water sounds, birds and nature sounds), with elements just barely at the threshold of visibility

- asher: intervals - the land of, 2008
the three asher related releases on this list are all sublime, quiet, ghostly, melodic & "music quite a bit in the background, like satie and his elevator music. i like the way the tunes sound from my kitchen, traversing 2 rooms. the little melodies are pretty how they come and go in the fuzz" m swiezynski

- asher + ubeboet - cell memory - wind measure recordings, 2008

- william barklow - voices of the loon - north american loon fund, 1980
the best of the bird releases i have listed here

- christopher bissonnette - in between words - kranky, 2008
"using orchestral sound sources as well as recording his own sounds to manipulate and process, bissonnette has crafted a symphony of six movements, with melodies as ghostly apparitions that fade in and out of view"

- donald j. borror - songs of eastern birds - dover publications, 1970
academic faculties of zoology and entomology, the ohio state university
genre: non-music

- a broken consort - three songs - sustain release, 2008
edition 1 of 1, the sounds of invisible birds overhead, black landscapes, and broken consorts

- taylor deupree - northern - 12k, 2008
re-release. as the deputy managing director of all international monetary business for this blog states: "these are some real jazzy tunes"

- morton feldman - the viola in my life - ecm, 2008

- fennesz/jeck/matthews - amoroso - touch, 2008
release is an homage to arvo pärt

- joe grimm - brain cloud - spekk, 2008
the first track is very beautiful

- philip jeck: sand - touch, 2008

- ali akbar khan - the classical music of ali akbar khan - prestige, 1964
- ali akbar khan - the soul of indian music - prestige, 1965

- laboratory of ornithology at cornell university: an anthology of over 200 american bird songs - olympic records corporation, 1980
found these bird recordings on closetcurios2.blogspot.com

- lau nau - nukkuu - fonal, 2008

- stephan mathieu - radioland - die schachtel, 2008
"exclusively based on real-time processed shortwave radio signals, radioland takes the listener on a carpet ride across endless, majestic shimmering landscapes" the best of his discs yet

- willie nelson - country willie - united artists records, 1965

- paavoharju: laulu laakson kukista - fonal, 2008
finnish bird drone/folk, a couple of nice tracks, and some fine melodies

- vidna obmana & asmus tietchens: motives for recycling - soleilmoon, 1999

- mathieu ruhlmann + celer - mesoscaphe - spekk, 2008
"dedicated to the 1969 voyage of the ben franklin, a naturally propelled submarine, sometimes less memorably referred to as the grumman/piccard px-15, designed for the exploration of the gulf stream's currents"

- sangeet trio (vishwa mohan bhatt, tarun bhattacharya, renu mojumdar): inde du nord, sangeet trio en concert - ocora radio france, 1995
recorded in théâtre de la ville, paris, found all these acora discs on differentwaters.blogspot.com, thank you kindly

- colin andrew sheffield: first thus - elevator bath, 2005
some stunning transforming of prerecorded music *
other elevator bath recordings including:
rick reed - dark skies at noon
ilya monosov - architecture on air and other works
josh ronsen + john grzinich + rick reed - frequency curtain

- frank sinatra - romantic songs from the early years - columbia
- frank sinatra - a swingin' affair! - capital, 1956
- frank sinatra - sinatra sings of love and other things - capital

- jerry and norma stillwell: bird songs of dooryard, field and forest - ficker recording, 1961

- svarte greiner - til seters - a room forever, 2008
2 tracks from erik skodvin, surely very heavy, and sublime, with an lp image not unlike the lush drones, (but on paper too glossy)

- tape - milieu plus - häpna, 2003/2008
- tape - opera plus - häpna, 2003/2008
- tape - luminarium - häpna, 2008

- john tavener, arvo pärt, henryk mikołaj górecki - tavener, pärt, górecki - emi, 1996

- giancarlo toniutti, andrew chalk - tahta tarla - pans'urlo panseri, 1993
acquired on a recommendation from john grzinich, and it is visually the most beautiful record i have, and some really stunning sounds as well

- v.a. - graceful degradation: variations - sourdine, 2008
with tracks by steinbrüchel, kenneth kirschner, heribert friedl, john hudak, steve roden, jason kahn and ubeboet. beautiful tracks and packaging with a subtle vellum abstraction, first release on asher's label

images by jon wozencraft

(this list benefits from my new record player, near 3 years without one)

invisible birds (forthcoming)

eugène atget

josef sudek

henry fox talbot

richard long

as if you were the voice that moves up and down the rungs of the world, between earth and sky, never beyond, always in the infinite globe, free but inside it, over there, close at hand, where the silver branches fork, awaiting nothing, fleeing nothing, traveller whom a second's joy, for no reason at all, steals from the journey's movement and leaves perched, at a halt...

from landscapes with absent figures translated by mark treharne