*2024 stock* "Since the early 70's and Luc Ferrari's Presque Rien N°1, we are now offered the possibility to listen to any sound coming from natural phenomenons and soundscapes as musical composition. We can listen to them as any audio-naturalist do, enjoying the different species of animals and sounds from the storm, the rain, the wind, and the space in between echoing all of them. But we can also listen to them as sounds in an acousmatic way, forgetting the different animals, the storm, the rain and the wind. Most of the time listening to nature sounds brings to mind the idea of quietness, peacefulness, mind relaxation...

In my experiences of listening to many kinds of nature sounds, live in the nature or from recordings by sounds artists and scientists, sounds from the wild can be very powerful, sometimes disturbing with piercing frequencies or with loud wall of noises, full of dream-like or surrealistic images. These experiences of listening to these sounds from the wild remind me other experiences of listening noise musics and other electronic, electro-acoustic and experimental musics. 

Different musics from these areas of music creation, like Harsh Noise Wall as a good example, bring the focus on the listening experience. The composition is a stillness, a freeze of a sound (or of a layer of sounds) and perceptions of the listener are moving during the process of the concert, or of the record listening, while the attention, the concentration is moving itself. Listening to some nature sounds can be kind of little similar in the process. The big difference here is that in the HNW the wall of sound seems at first inscrutable like the white wall in front of the eyes of the Zen Buddhist student, while the hall in WNH invites us in something lively open. And the space can be really wide." - Frédéric Nogray