Kate Carr: Shy, Typically Alone or in Pairs

Kate Carr, a London-based sound artist, says her album A Field Guide to Phantasmic Birds includes "all the birds I never recorded, and some I did".

Antonio Poscic describes it as:

a phantasmagoric set of artificial field recordings created with bird callers, electronics, and manipulated birdsong. Despite its occasionally familiar sonic artefacts - a bird’s undulating chirrup, a frog’s nocturnal croak – the music feels alien, as if documented on an exoplanet.

And he says that the final section Shy, Typically Alone or in Pairs:

finds a sliver of optimism hidden somewhere deep, and dresses it around faint arps, concentric noises that spread like dulcimer hits, and beatific, ambient Americana evoking riffs. 

As whispers, cicada vibrations, and bittersweet amphibian squawks emerge from the forest, I can’t help but wonder if a machine will ever be able to imagine something so unusual yet sublime on its own.