Live Stage: Cris Watson [
Zurich]
Chris Watson live at Cabaret Voltaire, Spiegelgasse 1, 8001 Zurich :: April 9, 2008; 7:00 pm.
Newcastle-based Chris Watson — who Stephen Vitiello calls “a brilliant master of environmental and field recordings” in his recent interview with Peter Traub for NMR — is one of the world’s leading recorders of wildlife and natural phenomena. A former sound archivist for the RSPB, Watson was a BAFTA award-winning force behind David Attenborough’s The Life of Birds, The Blue Planet and The Life of Mammals.
“I love the sounds of these parallel worlds,” he says - “spaces we occupy alongside other animals but rarely tune into.” On location he explores his experiments in sound, then weaves them into haunting recordings.
Watson has made three solo albums and also takes his field recording into the performance arena, producing surround-sound installations in the UK and abroad.
Watson has been working with sound since 1972. In the late 1970s and early 1980s he was a member of the early English industrial music group Cabaret Voltaire. After departing C.V., he co-founded The Hafler Trio, an experimental music project. In 1987 he formally began his present work as a sound recordist.
You can listen to some of his work here:
Wild Song at Dawn
Blessing
Celebration




















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