Ever since I started to share my field recordings online, listeners have told me that some of these are particularly enjoyable to listen to. Up until very recently however I have only focused on releasing libraries of recordings for commercial use.

These libraries are very well received and encourage me to work on more similar projects, but they include less than 1% of my catalog. The remaining hundreds of hours are all backed up on several hard drives with no one to listen to them.

A few weeks ago, while working on my taxes to the tune of recordings from my trip to Ethiopia, I realized others would probably enjoy listening to these sounds too. It didn’t take me long to export a few excerpts and to organize them as an album (which you can check out here).

Once this was done I spent the entire weekend creating 5 more albums: a generic Calm rain one, a selection of Savanna ambiences recorded on the Gabon/Congo border and three rainforest soundscape collections. They’re all available on Bandcamp if you want to have a listen.

So far the reception is great. I’m happy to see my recordings reach even more listeners than before and I’ll release more albums in the near future. Until then however I’m back working on commercial libraries, namely the elephant-sized African Jungle which should be out pretty soon.

Field recording in the Western Congo forest-savanna mosaic

I also want to mention that I’ll keep the two projects separate from now on. Mindful Audio will still focus on commercial sound recording and sound effects libraries, while Wild Aesthesia will be more of a label that releases field recordings for listening purposes. I will not cross post from one project to another so feel free to follow these new accounts:

Wild Aesthesia on Facebook

Wild Aesthesia on Bandcamp

Field recording tools of the trade

At the lower end of the price spectrum, field recording equipment will yield relatively similar results. A few dB of self noise won’t make a huge difference if the recordist hasn’t mastered the other tools of the trade, the ones that can’t be bought. Let’s examine some lesser known but rather more important tools that are sure to improve your field recording practice.

Introduction to Freestyle field recording

Freestyle field recording is a flexible approach to recording nature and wildlife sounds outside of the studio or any controlled environment, developed by George Vlad. While traditional methods are prescriptive and rigid, Freestyle field recording encourages deliberate experimentation and a very organic workflow.

Listening session at the House of Lords in Westminster

I recently received an invitation to play some of my soundscapes and to tell stories about conservation. While there’s nothing unusual about that, the setting was definitely novel for me.

A collection of Owl sounds

Owls are awesome and worth learning about. What better place to start than a curated selection of owl recordings, captured by your favourite wildlife sound recordist!

The 2025 Soundscape Fund

How can field recording make a difference for conservation and environmental causes? I get this question a lot, and one of the answers is here. Once a year I team up with Thomas Rex Beverly and Andy Martin to raise money for environmental NGOs.