BELOW SEA LEVEL

BELOW SEA LEVELSimon Scott

CONTENTS

BELOW SEA LEVELAN EXPLORATION OF THE

SUBTERRANEAN FENLANDENVIRONMENT

(PAGE 1)

PHOTOGRAPHS(PAGE 25)

NOTES & SKETCHES(PAGE 41)

POST.(PAGE 59)

BELOW SEA LEVEL

1

Introduction(page 2)

Before The Flood(page 3)

A Short History Of The Fens(page 6)

Listen (page 9)

Forever Changes (page 13)

Connections (page 18)

After The Flood(page 21)

Bibliography(page 23)

An exploration of the subterranean fenland environment“Finding music in nature lures us

into experiencing the echoing wonder

of the world, how beautiful it can be,

how much meaning can be heard

in the most unusual of places.”

(Rothenberg, 2001, p. 231)

32

Below Sea Level follows the creative process of tracing the

contours of the landscape to discover the ephemeral acoustic

environment. There is very little evidence of previously detailed

musical, acoustical or aural studies of the Fens despite music

composition and the natural sonic landscape being associated

together since the eighteenth century (Vivaldi wrote his compo-

sition The Four Seasons in 1723). Books have been written, maps

drawn and photographs taken, but never a sonic exploration of

areas that reside below mean sea level.

To contextualise this project, the history of the Fens and previ-

ous writings on sound ecology will be discussed. In particular,

the work of the Pierre Schaeffer (1910-1995), R. Murray Schafer

(b. 1933) and Bernie Krause (b. 1938) will be considered. The

creative process of actively listening, the implications of record-

ing the natural world using technology and the manipulation of

natural sounds used for musical composition are also explored.

I was born in the city of Cambridge in Great Britain and

grew up during the nineteen seventies and eighties in the

rural Cambridgeshire countryside on the very edge of the

Fens. During my childhood, my weekends were frequently

spent in the back of my parents’ car, visiting undiscovered

local locations, including Fen towns. My father would usually

drive us to visit a plot of land, generally a huge field, that as

an architect he was busy designing houses for. The world as

a child is usually perceived as larger than it is in reality, and

the wide horizons of the Fens, stretching further than the eye

could see, were distinctly enormous. When I moved away to

London, spending over a decade living in the busy capital city

of England, I’d dream of the open spaces where I spent my

childhood. I would yearn for the song of the skylark ascend-

ing up into the clear blue summer sky. When I finally moved

back to Cambridge, the huge three quarter skies of the Fens

were just as huge and gloriously full of life as I remembered

them as a boy.

In 2010, I was in search of new sounds to sculpt and organise

into compositional forms that would reshape the formula of

how I created music. I heard sounds in Cambridge every day,

both within my home and in and around the city, that in-

spired me to record this environment and compose with those

Introduction.

Before The Flood.

54

sounds, but this location was too familiar. I became attracted

to capturing somewhere that had foreign characteristics

worthy of transforming into song. I also wanted to create

music that was personal to me, that came from a place that

I connected to despite its unfamiliar landscape. I began

researching the historical background of the Fens and, as I

was now once again living on the edge of this curious place,

made several visits there. This landscape resonated inside me

as memories of my childhood and the unfamiliar reality of the

present day environment of the Fens formed an attractive

and exciting creative alliance.

To compose music from sounds taken from a specific environ-

ment is today not an original idea, but it was a new and unique

approach for composers who sought new musical timbres in the

nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Eric Satie (1866-1925),

Edgard Varese (1883-1965) and other progressive musicians

used raw sound materials to expand their compositional

palettes. Foley artists nowadays use field recordings (sounds

recorded outside of the studio) to recreate specific ambiences

and certain sounds. An encouraging aspect of using sounds

from your environment is that, as technology progresses and

man continues to build machines, we have a continually

evolving choice of timbres to listen to and work with.

76

Located in the East of England, the Fenland landscape spreads

itself over the counties of Cambridgeshire, Norfolk, Suffolk and

Lincolnshire. The Fens’ nutritious peat soil, known as Black

Gold, is animated by water and is the “largest plain in the

British Isles, covering an area of nearly three quarters of a

million acres…roughly the same size of the county of Surrey”

(Sly, 2003, p. 9). This place has a long and controversial

history of devastation and reconstruction, of manmade and

natural transformations over the centuries since it separated

from mainland Europe around 10,000 BC (Gerrard, 2003,

p. 11). This environment has been inhabited and fought over by

the Beakers, Celts, Romans, Anglo-Saxons, Vikings and Nor-

mans and is an important location for food production today.

In the seventeenth century, a significant event and irreversible

change occurred in the Fens when the Earl of Bedford (1593-

1641) instructed Dutchman Cornelius Vermuyden (1595-1677)

to drain the nutrient-rich soil that was profitable to cultivate.

Unfortunately, the peat dried out, the soil shrank and the land

sunk below mean sea level, causing catastrophic damage to

the environment. It also brought near-extinction to much of

the wildlife that depended on the water-based ecosystem of the

Fens. “The rivers are several feet higher than the surrounding

fields they are meant to drain” (Gerrard, 2003, p. 18). Vast areas

couldn’t cope with regular flooding despite the introduction

of eighteenth century windmills, nineteenth century steam

pumps and eventually the diesel pumps that today deal with

regular flooding. “Those familiar with flood on the Fens often

refer to the war against waters” (Gerrard, 2003, p. 37), and Peter

Carter, a local eel fisherman and willow merchant from Outwell

in Norfolk, said that he would like to experience how the Fen

dwellers of the past lived and worked in the Fens. “I hope one

day this Fen re-floods; I hope I get to see it because it would be

a glorious place” (Carter, 2011, interview). A fierce war of words

continues today over the difference of opinion on restoring

profitable farmland back to wetland, which is not everybody’s

idea of how they perceive the future of the Fens. This serves as a

poignant reminder that this wetland area has been transformed

without mutual consent between man, soil, plant and beast.

A Short History of the Fens.

98

Vermuyden employed seven hundred prisoners to dig the New

Bedford River, also known as the Hundred Foot Drain.

Obstreperous men conspicuously replaced the indigenous wild-

life, and the landscape changed forever. This artificial waterway,

and many others subsequently built, destroyed the habits of

these indigenous creatures, transforming the sonic landscape

and damaging the ecosystem. The drainage work was often

disrupted by protesting Fen dwellers, also known as Fen Tigers,

who opposed the drainage scheme, “and rioting was

frequent in many parts of the Fens” (Sly, 2003, p. 50).

I recorded several sound sources alongside and inside the

Hundred Foot Drain, and it is where many of the prisoners died

of bronchial maladies whilst working in this moisture sodden

environment. The embankment of the river is today the lonely

and desolate burial site for many of the workers, as the local

community refused to commit the bodies to graves in the

surrounding villages.

In 1968, Bernie Krause (b. 1938), a composer, biologist and self-

termed “sound recordist”, began to document environments

of the natural world that were facing extinction or dramatic

change. His “bio-acoustic” recordings (a term applied usually to

the sound of living creatures) provide the listener with real-life

representations of an environment. Krause admits in his book

Into a Wild Sanctuary (1999) that he initially struggled to record

successfully. “Although my ears had heard sound, they were not

trained to distinguish the many subtleties present in the world

of natural sound” (Krause, 2004, p. 4). He began to document

the disappearing landscape and discovered that he needed to

actively listen, rather than to only passively hear, in order to

accurately perceive the sonorous world. His social and

perceptual recordings are sadly now bygone documents of

certain environments erased or demolished by man. The

natural world is far more complex than our simple human

assumptions determine, and this was catastrophically

overlooked when the drainage of the Fens was ordered.

The nature reserve of Holme Fen, part of a restoration site

known as The Great Fen in Cambridgeshire, is cartographically

the lowest location in England. During my visits here, I was lis-

tening to sounds for very long periods of time at varying times of

the day and night, searching for compositional material. When

Listen.

1110

I heard the surprisingly uproarious water boatman (Notonecta glauca), an aquatic insect, on the end of my hydrophone (an

underwater microphone), I had no idea what these unfamiliar

sounds were. The amplitude was startling, the sound was totally

unlike anything I’d ever heard before, and it engaged my hear-

ing. I was unsure if what I was listening to was an error caused

by malfunctioning recording equipment or if there was an agri-

cultural machine near me making this huge cacophony

of sound. A comparison of timbre would be a shaking maraca

or percussion instrument being stuck frequently. I was

delighted to discover afterwards that these common British

lowland , also known as Backswimmers, were

creating sound to communicate to one another by rubbing

together body parts (which is called stridulating). After this

experience, I could relate to what Bernie Krause wrote when he

described his first experience of listening to the natural world

through headphones: “The epiphany was so overwhelming that

I completely lost track of time” (Krause, 2004, p. 3).

In addition to my hydrophone, I used contact microphones to

capture oscillating surfaces when recording, such as wire fences

at Welney, steel bridge supports at Three Holes and structures

at Pymoor. The creaking ice at Wicken Fen, “one of the old-

est and most intensively studied nature reserves in the British

Isles” (Friday and Harley, 2000, introduction), was a fascinat-

ing sound source to capture during the winter. I was excited

by the chance discoveries of combinations of sound that I was

documenting with my microphone. I began to experiment with

microphone placement, such as half in and out of the water.

The surface (seen) would mix sounds of an underwater envi-

ronment (unseen) to give me a third option of combining both

sound environments.

In 1948, Pierre Schaeffer, a French radio engineer and the respect-

ed founder of Groupe de Recherché de Musique Concrète (GRM),

recorded actual sounds from the environment to compose music

with. Schaeffer intended the soundscape to be “acousmatique” (hid-

den, not seen) so that the listener detaches associations to sound

sources. He encouraged listeners “to hear sounds as music…

divorcing them from the worldly source or cause of their produc-

tion” (Hamilton, 2007, p. 95). Schaeffer successfully utilised the

technology of the day and transformed recordings by reversing the

tape and creating loops in vinyl discs. Today, modern composers

have affordable access to computers and digital signal processing

software that allow faster and more detailed sonic manipulation.

1312

The eyes can switch off the ears. An example Bill Fontana gives

is, “If you walk down a street, you’re not going to listen to the

traffic, but if you heard a recording of the traffic in the woods,

you would listen” (Wyse, 2010, online). I began to perceive

changes in the complex communication of nature, in the

natural voices of the soundscape, as the seasons changed over

the various Fenland locations I visited. The weather conditions

would affect the details that I was recording, and each resonat-

ing aural detail would therefore vary in my microphone. The

process of sonically mapping the landscape gradually allowed

me to perceive the vitality and diversity of this environment.

It was as if it was beginning to accept me being here and

wanted to collaborate with me now that I’d patiently learnt

how to actively listen.

John Cage (1912-1992) quoted Claude Debussy’s (1862-1918)

essay History of Experimental Music in the United States (1959) as

saying, “Any sounds in any combination and in any succession

are henceforth free to be used in a musical continuity” (Cage,

1966, p. 68). A composition will only be considered as a piece

of music if the listener determines that the sounds are musical

despite the lack of traditional instruments, harmony and rhythm.

Bird song is often perceived as musical as it is sung; however,

if one places it alongside a recording of a passing train, we are

presented with a subjective view of the definition of what is com-

positional material and what is not. Both the bird and the express

train belong to the same environment and therefore

coexist together and become pertinent to the musical soundscape

if one ascertains that both sounds are compositional materials.

Forever Changes.

1514

The Aeolian harp produces musical tones without direct human

interaction and needs no music theory knowledge to be per-

ceived as musical. In Andy Hamilton’s book Aesthetics & Music

(2007), he states, “What matters is not whether the sounds are

experienced or conceptualized as this or as that, but what ‘this’

is when it is music – that sounds constitute music through their

intrinsic nature and organisation” (Hamilton, 2007, p. 48). The

Fens is a place where dramatic sonic opposites combine and

coexist, such as harmony and dissonance, forte (loud) and piano

(quiet), and natural and man-made sounds. I have no intention

of presenting the pieces of music as sound walks of the Fens,

or to follow a narrative. Seasons combine, varying times of day

intermingle, and manmade sounds coalesce with nature and

indigenous wildlife sounds. It is difficult to tell them apart and

all the more reason to allow them equal significance, despite the

natural beauty of the heron being aesthetically more pleasing

than a tractor, in Below Sea Level.

Luigi Russolo (1885-1947), an Italian painter and futurist,

demanded in his The Art of Noises: Futurist Manifesto (1913) that

we embrace the sounds of mechanization that began in the 19th

century. Russolo also stated, “This evolution of music is compa-

rable to the multiplication of machines, which everywhere

collaborate with man” (Cox & Warner, 2004, p. 11). As John Cage

famously once said, “Something is always making a sound”

(Schafer, 1977, p. 256). Sound is not located between silences

but is continuous, temporary, ontologically evolving and full of

new adventures. Omnipresent noise is an integral part of the

acoustic architecture of the past and present Fenland environ-

ment, and my objective was to keenly embrace and celebrate all

aspects within it. Treating noise as something to escape ignores

the fact that it is very much “at the heart of sound ecology’s

vocabulary, like an unwanted child” (LaBelle, 2008, p. 215).

In 1971, the composer R. Murray Schafer founded the World

Soundscape Project in Vancouver and invented the term “Sound

1716

Ecology” (also known as “audiology”). This non-artistic discipline

is applied in “fields that deal with the trauma produced by

environmental sound, generally termed noise, and its physical

and psychological damage” (Truax, ed. Norman, 1996, p. 51). The

WSP, which also included composers Barry Truax (b. 1947) and

Hildegard Westerkamp (b. 1946), had an original aim that was

“largely educational and archival, motivated by a concern for the

deteriorating state of the world soundscape” (Truax, ed. Norman,

1996, p. 53). In Schafer’s book The Tuning of the World (1977), he

argues in favour of acoustic design as a discipline to be imple-

mented alongside urban development and architecture. Schafer

“aimed to raise consciousness of sound on the human condition”

(LaBelle, 2008, p. 201), and his “soundscape studies” address the

need for man to positively reconnect to the natural environment

in response to ever-increasing global noise by means of “ear

cleaning” and active listening. Barry Truax extended the WSP’s

soundscape studies to what he called “acoustic communication”

that engages “with all the real world issues, whether it’s noise,

or the sound environment, or the media, or listening in general…

all the manifestations of sound, from an interdisciplinary point

of view” (Karman, 2009, online). His interests dealt with the

communication of sound information and the relationships

created between the environment and the listener. He also

importantly acknowledges the deterioration of human listening,

as we are constantly hearing “low information, highly redundant,

and basically uninteresting sounds” (Truax, 2001, p. 15).

1918

We belong to the land; the land doesn’t belong to us. And to

connect to it through awareness of the relationships between

sound events deepens our awareness of the environment to

which we belong. Pauline Oliveros (b. 1932) has a philosophi-

cal practice of perceiving sound, which she describes as “Deep

Listening”, that is meditative. She states on her website that it

encourages “the difference between the involuntary nature of

hearing and the voluntary selective nature of listening”

(Oliveros, no date, online).

Annea Lockwood (b. 1939), whose work A Sound Map of the

Hudson River (1989) is a site-specific aural journey that is perhaps

conceptually similar to Below Sea Level, uses her edited recordings

of various stretches of the Hudson River to convey a sound map

of the waterway. “I have recorded rivers in many countries, not

to document them, but rather for the special state of mind and

body which the sounds of moving water create when one listens

intently to the complex mesh of rhythms and pitches” (Lockwood,

1989, CD booklet). The special state of mind and body that the

sounds of moving water creates promotes and encourages a

meditative state that I hope is reflected in Below Sea Level.

In Why Do Birds and Whales Sing (1999), David Dunn (b. 1953)

also addresses the need for us to regain our neglected sense of

hearing due to our visual-orientated perception of our world. He

urges us to open our ears to listen to the phenomena of the natu-

ral world and connects the first perceptions of a human foetus in

the womb with archetypal nature sounds. Sound associations are

considered, such as: “The mother’s breathing cycle is like ocean

surf and her heartbeat like distant drums” (Dunn, 1999, p. 29).

Hildegard Westerkamp, who was instrumental in helping found

the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology, states in regard to listen-

ing that one moves to an inner space that leads one away “from

the external to the internal, seeking information about the whole

spectrum of sound and its meanings, from noise to silence to

sacred” (Westerkamp, 1998, online). Sounds such as bird song,

an overflowing stream and the wind whistling through silver

birch trees connect human beings to a place that we identify with

being connected to nature. Archetypal sounds “stir our ancestral

memories, bringing us into an environment through a universal

emotional reaction” (Sonnenstein, 2001, p. 184).

Connections.

2120

“There is a blurring of distinction between

a documentary field recording

and a recording that is subsequently composed

in a response to the sound environment”

(Norman, 2004, p. 61).

Over the two years I visited the Fens to record, my childhood

memories were reawakened and realised as I explored a land-

scape that was personal to me, but contained unfamiliar and

hidden acoustic details. What I have composed is an illusory

musical reconstruction of the landscape that intentionally

draws the ear into the music, thus promoting active listening.

However, Below Sea Level intentionally disengages any realistic

representation of the Fens. This is to reflect the historical dis-

location of this landscape when it was drained of its lifeblood.

Listening is engaged hearing; it lies at the very heart of sound

ecology – and by establishing a dialogue between the Fenland

environment and an autonomous musical exploration, I have

produced a subjective representation of the Fens.

After the Flood.

2322

Technology explores this unique landscape, amplifying tiny

sonic details, revealing complex communication and exploring

unwanted “noise”. The interface of a microphone and sound

recording device disconnects the Fens further away from its

locality. Listeners may ask why I have chosen to transform

sounds, such as the recorded song of a skylark or a swan bark,

by digitally processing them in a computer to create new sound

timbres. My answer is that I never intended to present this

landscape “for real”, as if you are actually in that environment,

as it is impossible to do so. The compositions are site-specific,

as they come from the Fens, and intentionally destined to be

listened to outside of the Fenland environment. As the mediator

between real and abstract, as the sound organiser and producer,

I hope the characteristics of these songs will draw attention to

themselves within new sonic environments, thus encouraging

listeners to deepen their perceptual awareness of the acoustic

world around them.

Cage, J., 1966. Silence.  10th ed. London: Marion Boyars Publishers.

Carter, P., 2011. Interview on life in the Fens as an eel fisherman.  [Interview] (Personal communication, 22nd   January 2011).

Dunn, D., 1999. Why Do Birds and Whales Sing? Santa Fe: Earth Ear.

Friday, L. and Harley, B., 2000. Checklist of the Flora and Fauna of Wicken Fen. Colchester: Harley Books.

Gerrard, V., 2003. The Story of the Fens. London: Robert Hale.

Hamilton, A., 2007, Aesthetics & Music. London: Continuum.

Karman, M.E., 2009, An Interview with Barry Truax. [online] Available at: http://asymmetrymusicmagazine.com/interviews/barry-truax/ [Accessed 16th April 2011].

Krause, B., 1999. Into a Wild Sanctuary: A Life in Music & Natural Sound, Berkley: Heyday.

Krause, B., 2004. Wild Soundscapes: Discovering the Voice of the Natural World. 2nd ed. Wilderness Press: Berkley.

Lockwood, A., 1989. A Sound Map of the Hudson River.  New York: Lovely Music Limited. [Music CD].

LaBelle, B., 2008. Background Noise: Perspectives on Sound Art.  New York: Continuum.

Norman, K., 2004. Sounding Art. Aldershot: Ashgate.

Oliveros, P. (no date). Deep Listening Institute. [online] Available at: http://deeplistening.org/site/content/about [Accessed 3rd March 2011].

Rothenberg, D. and Marta, U., 2001. The Book of Music and Nature. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press.

Russolo, L., 1913. The Art of Noises: Futurist Manifesto. In: Cox, C. and Warner, D., eds. 2004. Audio Culture: Readings in Modern Music. New York: Continuum.

Schafer, R.M., 1977. Our Sonic Environment and the Soundscape: The Tuning of the World. Vermont: Destiny Books.

Sly, R., 2003. From Punt to Plough.  Stroud: Sutton Publishing Limited.

Sonnenstein, D., 2001. Sound Design. Studio City: Michael Weise Productions.

Truax, B., 2001. Acoustic Communication.  Westport: Ablex Publishing.

Truax, B., 1996. Soundscape, Acoustic Communication and Environmental Sound Composition. In: Norman, K., 1996. Contemporary Music Review: A Poetry of Reality.  Amsterdam: Harwood.

Westerkamp, H., 1998. Nada: An Experience in Sound. [online] Available at: http://www.sfu.ca/~westerka/writings%20page/articles%20pages/nada_art.html [Accessed 29th March 2011].

Wyse, P., 2010. Bill Fontana: Caught by the River. [online] Available at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2010/apr/15/bill-fontana-interview [Accessed 4th April 2011.]

Bibliography.

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PHOTOGRAPHS

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NOTES & SKETCHES

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POST.

Simon Scott is a British sound artist, composer and multi-

instrumentalist who is currently based in East Anglia, UK. His

music explores a fusion of digital signal manipulation, micro-

melodies and minimalism combined with environmental sounds

and organic, acoustic textures. He is inspired by his interests

in sound ecology, music technology, illustration, digital media,

composition and sound art.

Since the late 1990’s, Scott’s work has been featured in a

variety of international films and television programs, sonic

art exhibitions and digital multi-media projects. He has toured

internationally since 1988 (he was the drummer for Slowdive

between 1990 and 1994), and his track “For Martha” was

included on the respected German label Kompakt’s Pop Ambient

2012 compilation series. Below Sea Level is Scott’s debut project

for 12k. The aesthetics of active listening and the subjective

distinction of compositional materials and sound timbres are

predominant explorations in his work.

Scott also runs the KESH Music label that provides an outlet for

experimental international music and curates related live events

in Cambridge.

7372

All words, illustrations and notes by Simon Scott.

Photographs by Simon Scott except portrait by Taylor Deupree.

www.simonscott.org

Thank you to The Great Fen Project, Peter Carter, ARU

Cambridge, Rutger Zuydervelt, Fenland Tigers, Lawrence

English, Dan Carney, Taylor Deupree, Kenneth Kirschner,

Michael Bullard, the Scott family, and listeners everywhere.

This journal was created in conjunction with the Below Sea Level

album available on 12k (12k1071). Designed by Taylor Deupree.

Typefaces: Din & Scala. www.12k.com

Simon Scott.

fen |fen| n. a low and marshy or frequently flooded area of land: a flooded fen.(the Fens) flat, low-lying areas of eastern England, formerly marshland but

largely drained for agriculture since the 17th century.