The rhythms of a childhood in the mountains
Take a walk with us into the beautiful, idyllic Windfall Farms of upstate New York surrounded by lush greenery and the faint smell of flowers. The gracious farmers of the land agreed to let Hanaé’ and her collaborators wander the farm, collecting sounds as they played in the weeds and bushes, listening to cicadas, dropping stones in the creek, getting as close as they could to a hive without getting stung, harvesting potatoes and carrots, and cooking.
Hanaé’ shared, “There are sounds in this pack that I’ve dreamt of sampling for years. The sound of a pitchfork biting into decayed matter—years ago, while working a compost pile, I wrote a song around this sound, the rhythm of this work.”
She added, “We named an audio track ‘Childhood.’ It’s the sound of cicadas as we walked along a path. It reminds me of visiting my Obachan in the mountains where she lived when I was a child. We would go out into the land and pick corn and dig out potatoes.” In addition to the sounds of nature, we recorded singing bowls, violin, cello, and hand-made taiko drums, which Hanaé’ was especially excited to share. She said, “I’m so excited to finally share taiko drum samples with other producers. They’re big drums carved from a single tree trunk, or, in this case, hand-made in the Navy Yard out of barrels by Yoko. I grew up with this sound, hearing it during the Obon Festival or the festival of the dead. There was one in the shrine that’s been passed down for generations in my family. It’s a vivid sound that conjures energy and life. We called the one we took with us on our cross-country tour ‘Auntie.’ It was lent to us by Shuichi Tom Kurai, a beloved mentor in LA who passed away last year.”
She added, “In many ways, I started this project with ideas for dance songs grounded by the sound of the taiko. Live, there’s nothing else like it—a low bass, that booms through a space. In my own work, I’ve found clear, accessible taiko drum samples to be rare, and recording this instrument to be incredibly difficult. It often clips, or the low end disappears. Nothing will ever replace the sound of a live taiko drum, but it’s wonderful to now have clear, accessible samples for others to work with. I’m delighted to be bringing this to other producers with Splice and the work of Yoko Nakahashi.”
In terms of what she hopes producers will do with these sounds, she said, “I hope this pack inspires other producers to explore the sounds in their own neighborhood and landscapes. To hear melodies in the choir of traffic sounds or hushing of wind moving through trees. I’m excited to hear pop songs with the sounds of water trickling through them, trap songs with a bed of cicadas humming in the background, soundscapes with ghostly string harmonics. I’ve already incorporated them into an experimental theater piece featuring live binaural and a cooking show. I can’t imagine where they’ll end up in other producers’ hands, but I wish these sounds well in their future lives”.
The microphones used in recording this pack were a Zoom h4n, AKG c414, and a Neumann u87.
