Name: Wild Anima
Nationality: French
Occupation: Sound Artist
Current Release: Wild Anima's new album Phytosynthesis is out via USM. Buy a physical copy on bandcamp. Stream here.

If you enjoyed this interview with Wild Anima and would like to find out more about her work and music, visit her official homepage. She is also on Instagram, Facebook, and Soundcloud.

To dive deeper, we recommend our expansive 15 Questions Wild Anima interview, as well as our conversation with her about “Mantras, Healing and the Heart as an Oscillator.”



Sound, song, and rhythm are all around us, from animal noises to the waves of the ocean. What, if any, are some of the most moving experiences you've had with these non-human-made sounds?

That’s an interesting question, sound has always been an important part of my perception. I have to dig into my memory to really explore this. Because sound isn’t necessarily music and I guess I would immediately associate it with music.

The first thing that comes to mind is definitely the sound of the sea that has accompanied most of my holidays when growing up, mostly the mediterranean sea that I’ve got to experience in Greece as a child and the Atlantic ocean in Bretagne in France.

Also the roaring thunderstorms in the mountains of Crete where my mother is from or in my father’s village called Anhydro in central Greece. I vividly remember those threatening cracks of thunder shaking the whole land destroying the airwaves almost. The strongest sound I’ve ever heard I would guess. So much power and force, pure electricity. I think it has been a very big influence in my love for experimental electronic music like the 2000s idm movement.

Very naturally the sound of rain comes to mind after mentioning the thunder. Once again I have vivid memories of being in my dad’s village, hearing the rain fall on the terrasse’s tin roof, my father shooting a video of the rain by the window with his 90s camescope, 6 year old me asking “Dad why are you shooting the rain?” him replying “J’adore la pluie!” “I love rain!”. It has that very comforting quality of asmr-like healing sound. There is something so comforting in its rhythm and sound texture, in a way it soothes the nervous system.

I also recall very deep experiences with rain sounds in England of course, where I have spent 6 years of my early twenties living in Bristol and in the Devonshire countryside. It is almost like Inuk people have all these names for snow, you could have all these names for rain in England (laughing). I think this is one of the things that attracted me to this land, believe it or not. The rain.

I recall one specific moment being in a very light rainy field in the farm I lived in Witheridge near Tiverton in north Devon with my zoom h2 recorder, hearing the sound of rain falling on a small swamp enhanced into my headphones. Very asmr. I did not know about asmr at the time but definitely was into these microscopic tiny soothing sounds, I would spend my day recording these tiny crackles and shifts in tone all over nature and learn how to use Ableton 7. Crafting these ambient field recording tapestries.

This was my first sound project called kurosounds. Nature was my primary material for sound production, I would love exploring the natural rhythms present in the field recordings, understanding the patterns, enhancing their presence, merging them together.



Another obvious natural sound is the sound of birds which I find very comforting. Especially in a city, it is always refreshing to hear birds in a distance, it gives a feeling of inspiration and triggers some kind of feel good chemicals in the brain.

Tell me a bit more about kurosounds and recording in the field for your new album Phytosynthesis?

Recording in the field is an integral part of my music production. I could say this is my original form of making music with plants of nature in general.

I first started producing music in the early 2010s mostly recording sounds of nature in the countryside of Bristol and Devon. In my experimental ambient project kurosounds the idea was to only use field recordings and voice as a primary source of sound.

I loved exploring the hidden rhythmic patterns I would find by listening carefully to the recordings I was collecting on a daily basis. It would give me such an amazing opportunity to connect with the natural world in a different way. Spending time alone in the wilderness and pausing somewhere for a while and listening to the tiniest crackles and soft movements around me through my headphones and Zoom recorder.

While I started creating in this way I discovered Björk’s work as well which I hadn’t really been aware of so far. It inspired me in a major way, especially the Vespertine album.



I was very inspired by her approach of collecting microscopic sounds and creating a whole library of them to use for producing pop music.

After spending a lot of time listening to plant sounds/music and their “hidden patterns,” do you feel there are structures in place which are either similar or different from human music?

I really love that question and I feel like I would myself like to ask the same thing. I am very much discovering and in a process of trying to understand the music that plants produce.

I am fascinated every time I have to say. Sometimes the sound produced by the plant I’m listening to truly blows me away. I have this experience of listening to a Yucca plant for example and being totally mesmerised by the prolific arpeggios and harmonies it was producing. I got to hear the music of magic mushrooms the other day at a friend’s house and was blown away by the music it created. It sounded like an amazing liturgical mass music almost like those of Johan Sebastian Bach.

I am still in a process of understanding the structures and patterns and for the moment I have more of an intuitive approach to listening to plant music. So I don’t think I can clearly identify if there are differences or similarities properly. I think one major difference is the temporality the music develops in plants.

Sometimes I feel like I can see the plant is hearing its own sound and almost gets excited about it (laughs). But of course it is only my own perception.

I have noticed that plants can be a bit less active at night as well probably because of the lack of light.

Is there something to be learned, and appreciated for humans by listening to them?

I think that there is indeed a wonderful lesson in the fact that humans are listening to plants, I really love seeing people opening up when they first hear a plant’s music.

There is something bigger being witnessed. It gives us the opportunity to realise that plants are not just here for decoration and beauty around us but that they are living and breathing creatures.

In a nutshell, it reminds us of the aliveness that surrounds us.

How important is sound for our overall well-being and in how far do you feel the "acoustic health" of a society or environment is reflective of its overall health?

A peaceful sound environment is definitely proven to be more beneficial for humans. Although I think there is a nuance to how we define peaceful. Some people for example can feel distress if the room is completely silent, and do need sound like green or brown noise in the background to feel a bit more at ease and relax the mind.

Background music is also something that can enhance well-being and accompany each moment of the day whether it is ambient or classical music, cheerful and energising music or more aggressive sounds that can be helpful for discharging strong emotions like anger. And sound is not only defined by hearing it, there are also the frequency and vibrations of its impact that is playing an effect on us. I seem to remember that deaf people can still sense the tone of the music they hear, whether it is quieter or more lively.

It is also known that sound has true healing qualities like the use of gongs and various other instruments. Though once again it is a question of perspective. I think  we could be surprised at how much some parts of the sounds of a city can be reassuring and soothing for the system. I am thinking for example of cars passing by at a distance, this can feel very relaxing for some people that have grown up in that environment like myself, or kids playing in a neighbouring school, I find this very soothing and pleasing. The sound of people talking in a distance can also be very nice, giving a sense of community and of not feeling alone in the space. It is a question of perspective once again, others might not relate to what I’m sharing at all.

But it is true that some sounds can be detrimental to someone’s well-being or to someone’s health even. If there happens to be some heavy construction near your home, this is very likely to drive you crazy and damage your daily life overall. In general I would say that sound has its importance regarding our well-being but that needs to be tempered and put in different perspectives. There is this known example of how classical music can notably show how plants grow and live better while listening to it.

Regarding the acoustic health of a society it is a challenging question for me to answer, I wonder what acoustic health really means. Do we value silence as a healthy acoustic criteria? Or is a lively sound environment like that of a party also a healthy sign of people enjoying?

I am as well asking a question. What is the sound of a society?

Many animals communicate through sound. Based either on experience or intuition, do you feel as though interspecies communication is possible and important? Is there a creative element to it, would you say?  

I definitely believe interspecies communication not only is possible but that it exists and is important. My whole art and music practice revolves on the idea that we can perceive and understand our whole environment through the feeling sense, this sort of 6th sense, as I call it, that our heart organ enables us to do.

I remember watching an amazing short documentary on the “Wild Thing” series on youtube where a woman was able to communicate with animals, interacting with them with her consciousness.



A very touching moment is when she is able to “talk” with a dangerous black panther whom nobody seemed to be able to tame. It made me cry to see how she was able to get him to soften and see them sharing this sweet exchange.

The creative element seems very potent to me for sure. I love to explore how it is possible to communicate with my surroundings - let’s say, the birds or the nearby fauna as well as mountains or the sea. All the elements are alive and possess a vibrational presence.

The creative input from this is for me to bring that imprint I receive from this and bring it into a song or to a performance or installation.