Join us for a walk along the beautiful Pingo River in Chilean Patagonia, as we trek towards the Cascado Salto waterfall and take some field recordings along the way. Our first recording is the water flowing past from one spot on the bank, and we move further on in the second recording from today’s selection.

City version:

This field recording of the Pingo river was reimagined by Natalia Ludmila, who writes:

“A recording of the Pingo* river from the Patagonia region sparked this sound piece that builds a narrative to describe a state of emergency. For this piece titled “swim, swim, don’t sink”, I repurposed the calming and soothing sound of the Pingo river flowing.

“In the piece, the river is the guiding thread in a deep and, at times, dark sound composition. And through this tension, I’m searching to put forward notions of a near and looming critical point of our climate, perhaps one of no return.”

Memory version:

In the second recording, we move to another part, where the river flows very rapidly over a rock formation in a particular way that generates a low “blooping” tone, almost as if the river is playing its own bassline to accompany its flow – listen out for it in the recording.

City version:

 

This was the starting point for the idea of the reimagined Pingo composition, which takes the speed and energy of the river flow and builds on it with a developing drum pattern.

First the hi-hats enter to represent the high-end spitting crests of the water on the surface, while the bass and toms stand for the deeper water and its immense power.

The piece builds with effects across the river field recording to create some tonal patterns around the drums, and everything fades back down to hi-hats as we complete our walk past the river.

Memory version: