Name: Andrew Weathers
Occupation: Composer, improviser, guitarist, mastering engineer / producer, field recordist
Nationality: American   
Current Release: Andrew Weathers's Dryfall, featuring Gretchen Korsmo, is out now.

[Read our Gretchen Korsmo interview]

Recommendations:
Cathy Lane & Angus Carlyle’s In the Field
David Dunn - Audible and Inaudible Words
William Least Heat-Moon - PrairyErth
Pauline Oliveros - Deep Listening: A Composer’s Sound Practice
Francesco Careri - Walkscapes: Walking as an aesthetic practice
R. Murray Schafer - The Soundscape
Gretel Ehrlich - The Solace of Open Spaces
Gordon Hempton - One Square Inch of Silence
Hildegard Westerkamp - Soundwalking

If you enjoyed this interview with Andrew Weathers and would like to stay up to date on his activities, visit his official website for more information. He is also on Instagram, Facebook, and twitter.



When did you first start getting interested in field recordings?

I was introduced to the notion of listening to environmental sound as a teenager. The prospect was extremely exciting and I’ve been drawn to work using those techniques ever since.

I’ve had some kind of field recording or sound-finding practice for as long as I’ve been making experimental-leaning music, though it’s been scattered and extremely unfocused for the most part. Those sounds have always made appearances in my work over the years, but it’s only been since 2019 that my practice as a solo artist has shifted to be almost entirely oriented around field recordings.

My album Recordings with Guitar was the turning point.



Which artists, approaches, albums or performances using field recordings captured your imagination in the beginning?

Francisco López, David Dunn, Jeph Jerman, Annea Lockwood.

[Read our Francisco López interview]

An interest in field recordings can often be part of a deeper engagement with sound. Can you talk a bit about your interest in or fascination for sound, the effect it has on you?

It just feels good to listen. Sound is in a unique category of matter by nature of being visceral and real but immaterial. Listening is a way into an interior without touching its edges. Scent is similar. Listening to an environment is similar to listening to drone, in the absence of input minute details take on an importance beyond their size.

Obviously, Pauline Oliveros’ thinking around Deep Listening had a profound impact on the way that I appreciate sound.

[Read our Pauline Oliveros interview]

Working predominantly with field recordings and sound can be a very incisive step / transition. Aside from musical considerations, there can also be personal motivations for looking for alternatives. Was this the case for you, and if so, in which way?

There’s an interview with Ian MacKaye out there where he talks about skateboarding as a means to an entirely novel perspective of the world.



Mundane features of the built landscape like stairs, handrails, and curbs are suddenly objects to be interacted with creatively. Field recording and photography are no different, they’re both a way into a certain perspective of the world that I wouldn’t have access to otherwise. At this point my entire experience of living exists as some kind of reflection of these pursuits.

I am an extremely restless person, for a long time that energy was put towards touring and performing. I find myself wanting to spend more time outside than in bars and clubs, so a deep field recording practice is a good excuse to change that focus in my life.

What, would you say, are the key ideas behind your approach to music and art?

Living, The Deep Map.

What are the spaces/places/sound sources that you find yourself most drawn to?

I live in the arid plains, and so the outdoor environment that I experience most often is either without resonance or filled up with the full-band noise of wind. I’ve come to appreciate listening to the resonance of places - forests, narrow urban streets, concrete pipes, caves.

The silence of the plains is dear to me, but very challenging to record.

Can you take me through the process of realising a field recording on the basis of a project or album that's particularly dear to you?

My favorite part of working with field recordings is that it provides an easy excuse to go new places and explore for myself. I’ll gather recordings on trips without a whole lot of forethought.

Lately I haven’t been going after particular sounds, but rather long recordings of specific environments. I keep somewhat detailed records of what and where I record so I can have some kind of conceptual grounding when I return to the studio. Often some kind of structure will start to appear while still out in the field. Once back in the studio I just spend time with the sounds I gathered, layering and cutting, adding instrumental parts, and otherwise enjoying the process of creative work.

My main interest in my work as an artist is that of making creative work and creative practice part of my every day life without arbitrary separation. I enjoy my life very much and I’m glad that I have recordings and photographs and texts and experiences to sit with and move around until they turn into something worth sharing.

What are some of your considerations with regards to the artistic qualities of a recording?

I appreciate clarity and focus and good recording quality, but I don’t think those are absolutely necessary to make good work with field recordings.

I want to hear beyond or tangential to what my naked ears can tell me, that’s what makes a good recording.

Is authenticity an important element for your work? Do you take an issue with cutting, editing, arranging and processing field recordings?

No, we learn a lot about our environment and how we live in it when we start listening outside of Real Time.

Cut, layer, stratify, rearrange, who cares, objective reality is a mist.

Sometimes, field recordings can uncover surprising similarities between "natural sounds" and elements of human music. How do you interpret these and what is your own view on what connects these two realms and what sets them apart?

As long as we still live under capitalism, we will never have actual peace and silence. It can be hard to hear sometimes, but there are human-made sonic intrusions in even the most remote places. So while I’m dreaming of the fall of capital, I have to accept that human music is part our soundscape and is therefore a necessary part of my work.

By choice or not, I can’t really see human and natural sounds as separate in any way. Of course sometimes a truck passing isn’t exactly welcome, but I don’t often edit out human-made sound for the sake of creating a bucolic fantasy with my work.

Sometimes the interaction of birdsong, natural resonance, and a distant motorbike is a unique listening experience, just like any other.

From the concept of Nada Brahma to "In the Beginning was the Word", many spiritual traditions have regarded sound as the basis of the world. Regardless of whether you're taking a scientific or spiritual angle, what is your own take on the idea of a harmony of the spheres and sound as the foundational element of existence?

Sensuous experience is everything. Our ears are a finely tuned first-alert system, we so often hear before we see or touch or taste. I’ve spent my life with music and sound and so it’s important to me by default.

There is a spiritual angle to sound and sensuous experience that I don’t have the language to adequately express. That’s why I make music.