The voice of the angels. . . . err, crickets

October 14, 2013 • 12:57 pm

Forget about nonexistent angels (I used to have a cat sitter who seriously thought that cats were God’s angels on Earth). Listen instead to the angelic sound of crickets on the Alto Rio website. Just click the arrow below:

It’s amazing, and the notes explain:

Best known for his collaborations with Philip Glass on Einstein on the Beach, and with numerous other artists, including Lou Reed and Tom Waits, American experimental theater stage director and playwright Robert Wilson has always had a keen ear for the truly imaginative. None can be a greater example of his visionary mind than that of his “choir of crickets.”

Sounding like a chorus of angels, the audio is actually a field recording of crickets chirping at night, slowed down at a downtempo pace, to create a vivid, still-life ambient piece. The track was supplemented with the original chirping recording, giving off a culmination of glowingly, heavenly sounds that shows music in its most “natural” form.

Remember, this is just animal noises. It’s a bit over an hour long, so if you want to go to sleep to the sound of cricket angels, be my guest.

quote-oh-god-if-there-be-cricket-in-heaven-let-there-also-be-rain-alec-douglas-home-301349
LOL

 

35 thoughts on “The voice of the angels. . . . err, crickets”

  3. Ethan Siegel over at his Starts With a BANG! astronomy site says there’s a female voice on the track ~ a Native American Opera Singer Bonnie Jo Hunt. Also Ethan says Robert Wilson is a misattribution ~ it’s actually another guy named Jim Wilson who produced it.

    1. But if you listen to the Youtube video you’ll hear that when she sings it’s completely different – and she very clearly describes the crickets as being recorded by Bob Wilson and having that eerie voice. Ethan Siegel has clearly got his wires crossed.

      1. Probably. I accept that the choral effect at the beginning results from two different speeds of a cricket track going in & out of sync. However the original cricket recording was made by a sound engineer, Jim Wilson who took it to Robbie Robertson.

        Ms. Hunt says so Here

      2. ?

        The transcript checks okay for me.

        [Unless I’ve a hearing problem and then I shouldn’t hear crickets. =D]

    2. The song in which Robbie Robertson uses this type of cricket recording is “Twisted Hair” the final track from the “Music for The Native Americans” album.

  6. Remarkable. My skeptic instincts are kicking in hard, here; I’d be especially interested in independent duplication of the findings. But, if real, it would potentially have significant implications for the field of psychoacoustics to learn that such a distantly-related species produces very recognizably standard harmonic progressions.

    There’s at least a dissertation lurking in that data — again, assuming it’s genuine. And there could well be much more than just a dissertation.

    b&

    1. Oh — and let me join this other chorus of liking the idea of nuking the “Like this” buttons. From orbit, of course — just to be sure.

      b&

      1. These stupid buttons miraculously appeared today, and may be some WordPress thing that they created. I’ve written the “happiness engineers” at WordPress (yes, that’s what they’re called) asking how I can remove them.

        Stay tuned.

        -Mgmt. (PCC)

          2. It was by the paw of the divine Ceiling Cat. His Kindness is once again bestowed upon us.

        3. “happiness engineers”? Excuse me…
          Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrggghhh!

          Thank you. Now I feel better. I just find it unbelievable that any organisation could be so collectively devoid of any sense of irony that they could perpetrate that. The late great Doug Adams would have had a field day with it. Did no executive at WP say “hey guys, everyone’s going to laugh themselves silly at us when they see that?” Excuse me, I need to go and decontaminate my brain…

  7. I was predestined and totally determined to make this comment! I have no free will! These words are coming out of me as if by preternatural force! It was pre-ordained that I make this comment.

    Oh. I’m sorry. Wrong tread!

    🙂

  8. We can add this to the list of self-disproving statements:

    “What you are hearing are the crickets only. No instruments or voices are added.”

    Well, no, I’m also hearing someone say that I’m only hearing crickets! 🙂

  10. I love the sound of crickets. When I was a kid, I’d catch one the big ones & put it in a big jar with air holes & lots of grass and fall asleep to its chirping.

    Now that I live in the country, this time of year, there is a huge cacophony of crickets & other insects.

    It’s serendipitous that I read this a couple of days ago about slowed down cricket sounds. People must be thinking about crickets a lot this time of year.

  11. I’m tempted to say this is what the word sublime was invented for. It reminds me just a little bit of Polish composer, Górecki’s Symphony of Sorrowful Songs (a highly religious piece but still musically beautiful).

    Mike

    1. It is lovely.

      Not all crickets ‘sing’. And in case people don’t know how to distinguish a cricket from a grasshopper, the grasshoppers have short antennae while the crickets have much longer ones.

  12. What you Yanks probably don’t know is that the cricket Alec Douglas-Home (Lord Home, pronounced hume), former British Prime Minister, refers to, is a game played by many nations in the Commonwealth. It is not the insect.

    1. Jeez, we’re not [I]all[/I] ignorant buffoons, you know! 😀 (Couldn’t you at least have added a “some of?”)

      1. OOps, just switched from a BBCode forum…

        Always great to make a mistake in a post proclaiming one’s knowledge…

  14. This recording has been around for some time. Quite predictably some Christians and New Agers have claimed it as evidence for God/Gaia.

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