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""When I'm on location, it's a totally solitary activity. You put some headphones on, and at that moment, nobody can hear the world like you can." Chris Watson is talking to me over Skype from his home in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, explaining the details of a soon to be released smartphone app, which contains a cherry-picked collection of his sound recordings made as far back as the 1990s. Many originally appeared on CD (via Touch, who now also have an iPhone app), but Watson is enthusiastic about finding new formats such as this for his work. "The app is going to be used by individuals, and that means there's an individual at either end of the chain," he says. "I like the idea that wherever you are, you can drop into this environment." "

"I came across the work of Chris Watson when first introduced to his glacier recordings (1). I was immediately fascinated. These peculiar sounds had obsessed me since watching an episode of the 90s TV series "A Northern Exposure". Every spring, a whole Alaskan town almost goes insane because of having to hear the sounds of melting snows and glaciers for several weeks. Such a powerful and strange phenomenon. Few years later, a random event brought me to similar thoughts: the compacted ice after a day of heavy snow, melting on the terrace above the small flat in Newington Green I was living in at that time. We heard the squeaky, screechy and creaking sounds for days. Day after day we kept wondering whether those noises we had never heard before were actually coming from the ice."

"Asked to curate a night of insect music for Pestival at London's Southbank Centre, wildlife sound recordist Chris Watson thinks he may just have found a 15th-century iPod"

""We bombard ourselves with sound and music… it's everywhere." So says musician, artist and nature recordist Chris Watson who has captured sounds for numerous wildlife TV shows, including Sir David Attenborough's Planet Earth series on the BBC among many others. In this episode our ever-intrepid host Tim Hinman points his microphone at, well… microphones, speaking with Watson and sound artist Jana Winderen about our ever-fascinating natural world and the jungle of sounds it makes."

"Chris Watson shares his experience as a composer and location wildlife sound recordist, discussing the technical elements of field sound recording and presenting his recordings of the rainforests near Iguazu Falls in Brazil and Brinicles (icicles forming under sea ice) in the Arctic and Antarctic. He concludes with a case study, presenting a piece of sound art, commissioned by the National Gallery, created in response to John Constable's The Cornfield."

"Conversations with Odin is a sound installation that presents the remarkable and seldom-heard phenomenon of ravens gathering to roost."

"Sound journeys is an experiment into how sound shapes the way we understand the world, created by The Principals in collaboration with sound recordist Chris Watson (sound recordist for David Attenborough and formerly of the band Cabaret Voltaire). Shot and edited by Samuel Russell, title design by Olivier Lebrun, sound and lighting technicians Pablo Gnecco and Nate Turley. Sponsored by Ford and B&O Play."

"Jana Winderen is an artist, widely known for her recordings that reveal sounds from hidden sources - oceans, ice crevasses, glaciers - using a variety of technology, from high quality hydrophones to ultrasound detectors. Her work is published on Touch Music (same as Chris Watson) and her biography boasts of a long and impressive list of art installations."

"Chris Watson, who has worked on Attenborough's Frozen Planet and Life in the Undergrowth, shares a remarkable insight into sound recording, some exclusive clips - and his feelings about music in wildlife shows"