SITE is a collaborative conceptual series curated by Driftworks and Audiobulb Records, exploring the relationship between sound and place. Each edition invites artists to recreate their personal perception of a location, blending environmental sounds and imagery to capture the unique ‘audio-geography’ of our world.
OD is Alex O‘Donovan whose SITE is the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard.
Living between structured and textural forms, Svalr is a collection of sonic reflections and impressions from a field recording expedition to the remote Arctic archipelago of Svalbard. Built from the sounds of glaciers, fjords, wildlife and human structures, OD’s debut explores the synchronous harmonies of an isolated, extreme and rugged landscape. Each track on Svalr is representative of a day of environmental recordings, which play back as a sensory, field journal of Svalbard’s changing climates and unconventional acoustics.
On Svalr, OD reaches beyond traditional ambient recording to magnify the subperceptual. The sound offers a new perspective on a fragile landscape and sensitive ecology, and the human connection and disconnection across the land that, despite its remoteness, critically absorbs the global impact of humans in the Anthropocene.
1. Arrival
2. Impermanence
3. Pale
4. Crushing
5. Permabloom
During the expedition to the Arctic wilderness, OD (aka Alex O’Donovan) captured a detailed acoustic ‘map’ alongside sculptor and installation artist, Andreea Ionascu. Using both conventional field recording and unconventional custom DIY microphonic devices including; hydrophones for underwater sounds, capturing the songs from Beluga whales, geophones for subterranean resonances in the ice and permafrost, electro magnetic interference mic’s listening to electronic transmission signals from various human technologies, and a 36 channel piezo mic sculpture for capturing sensitive vibrations.
The recordings revealed an extraordinary commonality across Svalbard’s terrain: the ice, rock, permafrost, structures and even wildlife seemed to resonate in the same key, creating a rich environmental harmony. OD’s compositional process began with enhancing, manipulating, or emphasizing standout sounds, which he then processed and accompanied with synthesis, and arranged into an intuitive musical order. Svalbard’s extreme conditions and unique challenges— including 24-hour summer sunlight, distorting time; sub-zero temperatures draining batteries and freezing hydrophones; the threat of a polar bear encounter—naturally work their way into Svalr, with OD balancing the formidable, isolated, and overwhelming majestic aspects of nature across the 5 tracks.
The soundscape flows between soft textures, angular atonal noise, and melodic ambience, reflecting OD’s experience as an emotional observer of this remote environment.
OD is the moniker of artist and music producer Alex O’Donovan. Based out of his London recording studio, and with a background producing and engineering artists across a variety of genres and mediums, OD creates and performs immersive audio visual electro acoustic works, often collaborating with other noise, ambient, modular synth performers and visual artists.
Originally developing his creative practice in Australia, OD is a solo focus on cathartic creation of experimental and genre spanning composition and sonic art. Each project explores noise, ambient and electronic textures that span the emotional poles of restraint and surrender, structure and formlessness, inspired by location-based field recordings. Through a delicate and detailed approach, combining DIY instrumentation, analogue synthesis and spectral manipulation, OD’s music reflects humanistic experiences and emotion through unrestrained and unconditional musical arrangement.
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