This field atlas is your personal guide to the sights and sounds, winds and whims, colors and clouds captured in the music of “Atlas Of Sound, Coast Redwoods, 41°32’09.8”N 124°04’35.5”W”. In it you will find poetry and pictures, personal stories of Elsa’s experiences in these places, in depth details about the songs and the process of composing them, artwork by Pomo indigenous artist Danokoo Hoaglan and other secrets and delights you won’t find anywhere else. The intent is to give you, the listener, something to hold and guide you into a deeper experience of everything the Redwood forests have to offer. Grab your copy and come sit/walk/dance in the trees with us.
Includes unlimited streaming of Atlas Of Sound - Coast Redwoods - 41°32'09.8"N 124°04'35.5"W
via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
ships out within 5 days
Purchasable with gift card
$25USDor more
T-Shirt/Shirt + Digital Album
Lovely black with original art inspired by the Redwoods. Pick your size.
Includes unlimited streaming of Atlas Of Sound - Coast Redwoods - 41°32'09.8"N 124°04'35.5"W
via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
ships out within 5 days
Purchasable with gift card
$40USDor more
T-Shirt/Shirt + Digital Album
Get it all!
Includes unlimited streaming of Atlas Of Sound - Coast Redwoods - 41°32'09.8"N 124°04'35.5"W
via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
ships out within 5 days
Purchasable with gift card
$55USDor more
Streaming + Download
Includes high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more. Paying supporters also get unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app.
Elsa Nilsson - flutes/composition
Jon Cowherd - piano
Chris Morrissey - upright bass
"What marvels for the ear! The diverse energies of the forest are given brilliant new life in these sonic journeys. Music always connects, and here we are united to the textures, rhythms, and timbres of the living Earth." - David George Haskell, (author of "The Songs Of Trees" and Pulitzer Prize finalist "The Forest Unseen; A year's watch in Nature")
“Wow. What a visionary, immersive project. Atlas of Sound is call to engage—not just with our listening ears—but with the whole of our bodies and lives, to the ecosystems that cradles us. In this music, I find my imagination connected to the physical forest, my hearing to the whole of my body and the earth beyond. Elsa Nilsson and the gifted artists she works with bring us a highly original and beautiful new way to understand our place in the world.” - Lyanda Lynn Haupt (author of Rooted, Life at the Crossroads of Science, Nature and Spirit)
Welcome to Atlas Of Sound, a long form musical exploration of humanities connection to place. You are looking at the first in a series of field atlases that will accompany recordings of location specific suites. I invite you to read, listen and join me in the sights, sounds, smells, sensations, history and future of the Northern California Redwood Forests. Each one of these records aims to capture the ethos of a place, what it feels like to stand there and be part of the world around you.
Trees remember the things I tend to forget. When I am with them I feel both infinitely small and infinitely loved. I feel seen and heard in ways I don’t often experience with humans. The secret is in the tempo, how slow they move. For me to hear them I have to slow down, stay still. Really, really listen. When I do, I find music in every movement. There’s a melody in the rustle of leaves as the wind blows through them and they release and float to the ground, a groove in the sound of footsteps real or imagined.
My first music-making experiences were improvising with nature. I would sing to myself as I wandered through the birch forests at the edge of the ocean in Sweden, imagining that I was singing with the trees. I was never alone in those moments. The enormity of the connections and support the forest offered always gave me a sense of peace and belonging, no matter where I was in the world. Now, when I tour, I make sure to leave extra time whenever I can to sit with trees until I hear their songs. Then I play with them as a greeting and a sign of belonging, for me and for them. These songs always feel different, like they aren’t coming from me. In the summer of 2019, I found myself in the Redwood forests of Northern California twice. I set my phone next to my bare feet on the soft padded layers of fallen Redwood leaves and recorded the ideas that came in their presence.
Over lockdown, I took these improvisations and turned them into this suite of music. I have always appreciated the emotionally transportive qualities of music, but this time I was transported to a specific location. I wanted to explore this sense of place to its fullest and create something that captured the scope of the connections in an ecosystem, both those we can clearly see and those that are hidden. By doing this I hoped to create something that can encourage a strengthening of our relationship to the natural world and our place in it. So, confined to my apartment in Brooklyn I began to write.
In my voice memos, I found nine rough recordings from two Redwood forests. One set of recordings was from 41°32'09.8"N 124°04'35.5"W, marking the exact coordinates of warm granite rock on a beach at the north end of Redwood National Park. I had spent a morning there playing into the wind, pausing from time to time to record a seed of an idea, after camping and hiking in the Redwoods with my partner Cody Rahn. In these recordings I found the main themes for Sunshift Haze, Catching Droplets, Epicormic, Fairy Rings, The Ground Is Its Own, Molted Steps, and Hold On To Eachother. The second set of recordings was from a month later at 38°23'58.3"N 122°59'30.8"W, inside a giant hollow tree in the Grove Of Old Trees outside of Occidental, CA. In these recordings, I found the seeds for Coralie, Old Growth, and Proof Of The Unseen. To my surprise, even though these improvisations were in different locations and over a month apart, there were many similar themes and ideas running through them.
At home in my quarantine, I wrote out every note. I listened closely and imagined how it felt to be among the Redwoods. I added harmony and then changed it. Sections moved between songs with the fluidity of the wind. Moments from different seed recordings found their place among each other like the eye shifts focus in landscapes of changing depth. In this process, I learned a lot about patience and gained a new appreciation for my place in the world. The Redwoods gave me these songs, and now they are here for you. This book will share art, poetry, images, maps, and cool facts about these trees and I invite you to listen and imagine you are there. We belong to the world, more than it belongs to us. I hope this music gives you a sense of your place in it.
Old-growth coast redwood forests store more carbon per acre than any other forest type, and as such is an incredibly important ally in our fight against Climate Change. I feel like a lot of the conversation around climate change focuses heavily on science and leaves out the intimacy of the relationship between us and the world. The suite depicts many different aspects of how we relate to the Redwoods and their connection to each other, including how the trees communicate through mycorrhizal connections between their roots, how they pull water from the fog enabling them to grow taller, the tree’s reactions to fire and how it triggers new growth, and an acknowledgement of indigenous people’s relationships with the trees. It is a story of interconnectedness that spans our history and informs our future.
credits
released April 22, 2022
Recorded by Chris Benham at Big Orange Sheep, Brooklyn NY USA.
Mixed by Mike Tierney
Mastered by Nate Wood
Cover and book design by Magdelena Fumagalli
supported by 30 fans who also own “Atlas Of Sound - Coast Redwoods - 41°32'09.8"N 124°04'35.5"W”
I normally only listen to electronic music, but after listening to this album months ago I found it kept calling out to me. Now after purchasing it I can see why. I am totally addicted to its beauty and harmony. Thank you so much for the wax version, as it is the only form of music I collect. kaosskid
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