Animal Sounds

Animal sounds is a recording genre built from the voices of animals themselves: whale song, birdsong, frog choruses, insect stridulation and the dawn chorus, captured in the field and issued as albums. Made by bioacousticians, wildlife recordists and sound artists using hydrophones, parabolic reflectors and contact microphones, these records occupy the space between scientific document and listening experience. Some present unedited habitats; others, such as the work of *Bernie Krause*, organise recordings around the idea of the biophony — the collective sound of an ecosystem. The genre's landmark, *Roger Payne*'s "Songs of the Humpback Whale" (1970), became the best-selling nature recording of its era.