In 2022, I spoke to the sound recordist, Chris Watson, ahead of a performance at London’s Southbank Centre, showcasing decades’ worth of his field recordings. Over the course of a fascinating and meandering conversation, we spoke about his life and work, recording sounds in locations ranging from Lindisfarne Priory in Northumberland, to glaciers in Antarctica.
He spoke about the challenges of life as a sound recordist — from placing tiny microphones underwater to capture the faint crackle of oxygen bubbles, to edging close enough to record a crocodile. He described how a lifetime of intent listening sharpens one’s sensitivity to the subtlest sonic details, and recalled the time he created a CD for David Attenborough, comparing the soundscape of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans — the latter, he noted, sounds distinctly softer. He also told me why he believes that recorded sound has so much potential as an art form, arguing that it is potentially even more emotionally impactful than music or visual art.
It’s a philosophy that he has put to the test several times. In 2010, he created a soundscape for John Constable’s painting The Cornfield for an exhibition at The National Gallery. In 2012, he made ‘In Britten’s Footsteps’, an installation featuring a montage of natural sounds recorded along the daily walking routes of Benjamin Britten in Aldeburgh, Suffolk. The following year, he recorded the sounds of Newcastle train station over several months to create the radio programme The Station for BBC Radio 4.
Sadly, there wasn’t space for everything that came up in our interview, which you can read here. But here is one of the snippets I left out — Watson reflecting on the unique power of recorded sound to evoke a sense of place, in line with the thinking of the 1930s writer Thomas Lethbridge. Have a listen.