Need more nature? Listen to 12 essential field recordings

The world of “field recordings” is cinéma vérité for the ear: the sounds of natural phenomena, occasionally from far-flung places, documenting the unreachable, the unexpected and the heretofore inaudible. Listening to these recordings of chattering animals, bustling ecosystems and roaring weather systems can be an experience that blurs the boundaries of music and chance, documentary and art, new age and noise, the real and the imaginary.

Although often bolstered by studio trickery, Irv Teibel’s pioneering “Environments” albums in the 1960s and ’70s helped popularise the idea of lapping waves, rustling leaves and chirping cicadas as a relaxing slice of audio tourism. And the 1970 release “Songs of the Humpback Whale” was a surprise smash. Since then, the world of field recording has grown downright hallucinogenic. Today, great artists like Chris Watson, Jana Winderen and Jacob Kirkegaard provide patient and exploratory listeners with the near impossible like the bustling sea life of Greenland, the volcanic vibrations of Iceland or vultures chomping on a zebra carcass in Kenya. Here are 12 essential recordings that help bring the outside to you.

Peter Bruce, ‘The Lyrebird: A Documentary Study of Its Song’ (1966)

“The lyrebird has always been recognised as the greatest mimic in the world,” says Peter Bruce at the beginning of this exploration into Australia’s feathered Rich Little, “but recent studies have proved it to be a very skilled musician and composer as well.” Since 1952, Folkways Recordings has been a pioneer in capturing and marketing the natural world, printing full-length albums of sea creatures, bugs, frogs, locomotives and, in one perplexing 1964 release, the sounds of an bustling office. This collection captures the five-octave range of the lyrebird via a mutating mélange of melodies, trills, clicks, squeaks, warbles and staccato bursts. Naturally, avant-garde maverick John Zorn cited this album as an influence on his sax playing.

Luc Ferrari, ‘Presque Rien n°1, le Lever du Jour au Bord de la Mer,’ (1970)

French composer Luc Ferrari created this immersive, glacial piece of musique concrète from sounds he gathered via his windowsill on the Croatian island of Korcula. Composed with what he said was “the most undetectable interventions possible,” he made a dreamlike montage of morning in a fishing village with a photorealistic lens — complete with barking dogs, bicycle bells, puttering boat motors, donkeys, cicadas and a distant song floating by.

Roger Payne, ‘Songs of the Humpback Whale’ (1970)

This staple of every new age-friendly home in the ’70s and ’80s was actually a pioneering work in field recording. Using underwater hydrophones, biologist Roger Payne recorded the beautiful communications of these mighty mammals. Their enchanting, meditative moans captured America’s imagination: The album sold 100,000 copies and helped kick-start the “Save the Whales” movement that helped ended much of deep-sea whaling worldwide. “These sounds are, with no exception that I can think of, the most evocative, most beautiful sounds made by any animal on Earth,” Payne told NPR.

Irv Teibel, ‘Dawn and Dusk in the Okefenokee Swamp’ (1974)

Between 1969 and 1979, Teibel released 11 volumes of his “Environments” series, a collection of seashores, thunderstorms and creaking sailboats — often edited and manipulated for optimum therapeutic effect (his “wind,” for example, was a synthesizer). His work has been appreciated anew thanks to Numero Group reissuing his catalog on the stand-alone “Environments” app, and a recent New York Times article that showcased one of his rainstorms from 1970. The best of the Environments series is “Dawn and Dusk in the Okefenokee Swamp,” a journey to the centre of a wetland on the Florida-Georgia line where frogs, bugs, birds and even the occasional alligator have their daily and nightly commune.

Toshiya Tsunoda, ‘Extract From Field Recording Archive #1’ (1997)

The recent five-CD “Extract From Field Recording Archive” boxed set explores the work of Japanese sound artist Toshiya Tsunoda, who records the natural vibrations of pipes, bottles, fences and more. His work reveals the hum of our surroundings — occasionally gorgeous, occasionally foreboding — as water and wind playfully interact.

Chris Watson, ‘Outside the Circle of Fire’ (1998)

“There is no audio equivalent of a zoom lens,” Chris Watson told BBC News. “So I became interested in getting microphones very close — into places, a lot of the time, where you wouldn’t be able to, or wouldn’t want to, put your ears.” On his second album, Watson — a veteran of recording sound for TV — allows the listener to get up close and personal with the wildlife of Zimbabwe, Kenya and Costa Rica. A pulsating cheetah, some honking hippos and a trumpeting deer all get their turn, but nine vultures and a brigade of flies exploring the rib cage of a zebra carcass is a three-minute Hieronymus Bosch.

Francisco Lopez, ‘La Selva’ (1998)

Across a single 70-minute track, Spanish sound artist Francisco Lopez presents a rhythmically and texturally complex trip to a Costa Rican rainforest, where sounds slowly evolve from the serene pit-pat of rain to the chaos of creature communication to the blown-out natural white noise of a waterfall.

Tucker Martine, ‘Brokenhearted Dragonflies: Insect Electronica From Southeast Asia’ (2004)

Producer Tucker Martine captures shimmering walls of dragonflies and cicadas across Laos, Thailand and Burma. It was released on the Sublime Frequencies label as “Insect Electronica” because of their otherworldly, high-pitched, arrhythmic chirps, drones and swoops: These musical bugs could have fallen from an Aphex Twin song or an Iannis Xenakis composition.

Jacob Kirkegaard, ‘Eldfjall’ (2005)

The recording locations of Danish sound artist Jacob Kirkegaard are especially poetic: His albums have revealed the empty rooms of Chernobyl, the inside of morgues and the otoacoustic emissions of his own inner ear. The deep and moody rumbles of “Eldfjall,” from 2005, document volcanic activity underneath the surface of Iceland.

Jana Winderen, ‘Energy Field’ (2010)

“In the depths of the oceans there are invisible but audible soundscapes, about which we are largely ignorant, even if the oceans cover 70% of our planet,” Norwegian sound artist Jana Winderen said. On her breakthrough album, “Energy Field,” she uses hydrophones and omnidirectional mics to capture the darkly ambient sounds of the freezing Arctic: ravens, winds, fish, thunder, crustaceans, the insides of glaciers and all sorts of alien strangeness. A gifted editor, as well as a curious hunter of sounds, Winderen’s unhurried compositions, play out like John Carpenter’s “The Thing” if it was directed by Andrei Tarkovsky.

Chris Watson, ‘El Tren Fantasma’ (2011)

Like Luc Ferrari’s compositions, Chris Watson’s celebrated “El Tren Fantasma” used real recordings for a fictionalized rendering. Having made recordings for a 1999 episode of BBC’s “Great Railways Journeys,” Watson recreates a now-defunct ride across Mexico, from the Pacific Ocean to the Gulf. This virtual vacation features plenty of rhythmic chug-chugging alongside distant radios, chirping birds, stretches of serenity and even a crescendo into some more composed song craft.

Adrian Rew, ‘Slot Machine Music’ (2013)

Life is not just ponds, birds and trains. American sound artist Adrian Rew captured the euphoric, psychedelic, ping-ponging din of three Midwest casinos on “Slot Machine Music,” presenting the familiar plunk and buzz as an ecstatic noise symphony.