Greenhouse Disco

By Beccy Owen and David De La Haye

An invitation:

This is a place where you can listen, move and breathe. The hanging headphones carry the UnderSounding album to your ears. This is an eclectic collection of experiments, created in collaboration with the garden, its listeners and UnderSounding’s resident musicians and sound artists, David De La Haye and Beccy Owen. Feel free to listen to some or all of what is on offer here. You can use the device to skip tracks or listen again.

Liner notes:

Natural soundscapes have fuelled the imagination of composers for centuries - birdsong being perhaps the most beloved muse. The UnderSounding workshops have encouraged people to connect to hidden sounds of the community garden and discover their own musical adventures. 

The following pieces have been inspired by the responses of workshop participants; by watching people literally dance to the sounds of a pond; through conversations about why aquatic creatures produce sound. They are a celebration of the energetic rhythms of life.

Track listing:

Track Information:

ONE…..What did you hear?

by David de la Haye

In this piece, garden explorers find words for the strange noises discovered in forgotten corners. By mimicking these wild rhythms, we find new ways to belong within the garden's soundscape. The piece presents hydrophone and contact microphone technologies as a way of extended listening. The question ‘what did you hear’ now goes beyond the normal range of human hearing. 

TWO…..Sound So Cool

by David de la Haye

The underwater sounds found in a pond are often mistaken for digital synthesisers. This track brings these glitchy, haphazard sounds  together with steady beats and bass. Somewhere in the middle, these biotic and electronic noises meet to create a new ‘cool’ sort of music.

THREE…..We Are Nature

by David de la Haye

Opening with a poem from our local school workshops, this breakbeat-style track exemplifies the wilder, messier side of nature. Featuring recordings of underwater insects alongside improvised electronics inspired by pond soundscapes, it summons the idea that the garden is a noisy space containing monstrous storms and screaming cockroaches. Humans are nature too; it is often us who are the noisiest creature, masking the voices of the non-humans around us.

FOUR…..Specular Reflections

by Beccy Owen Duration: 3:51

Specular reflections refers to the mirror-like way light bounces off smooth surfaces in a single direction; this piece uses sound to represent light reflecting off the Wild Roots pond. The rhythms you hear are directly inspired by a series of  short, improvised junk percussion sessions with garden explorers.

FIVE…..Inside The Trees Is Where I Want To Be

by B. Owen  Duration 4:11

This piece attempts to naturally calm the human nervous system. Whilst listening you may wish to try the 4-7-8 breathing technique this track is built upon: inhale for 4 beats, hold for 7, exhale for 8). Don’t worry if you lose count. It doesn’t matter! The 4-7-8 technique is based on an Indian, yogic called Pranayama. The steady pulse being offered to the breath in this piece is accompanied by birdsong from the garden and the processed sounds of wind as it can be heard inside the tree trunks on a windy day.

SIX…..Lullaby To Compost

by Beccy Owen Duration: 3:41

Featuring young explorer’s reflections on what they heard and the Japanese firefly song Ho Tarukoi, this piece is accompanied by an improvised sound bath performed by the UnderSounding team. The English lyrics in the piece are crafted from youth poetry to illuminate hidden wildlife:

“Beneath the shelter away from the light, the beneath is wild and we are nature. The sound of things that belong to themselves. The beneath is dark churns and rest. Pouring itself around itself, spirals of light in the darkest places. A mechanism of charm.”

SEVEN…..Phoenix And The Butterfly

by Beccy Owen Duration: 2:34

Featuring a young listener, Phoenix, who enthusiastically explored the garden, recording with a microphone as she went. It blends her improvised melodies with her capturings of plants, creatures, and water, until it leads to her closing presentation of the garden, offered for her imagined future “followers”, i.e. that’s us!

Stories from the UnderSound

Tales of the beneath, created especially for the garden and its listeners. An imagined world set in The Garden of Forgotten Time. Each story has been inspired by the musings, conversations, findings, and happenings during the workshops and creative development of the UnderSounding project. A new set of myths born from within the Wild Roots Garden.