About listening and this website

„Zvířecí hudba“ is a gallery of sounds, sound compositions, sonographs, field recordings and acoustic plays. Name of the web literally means “Animals' Music” and the author deliberately does not provide any explanation of it.

Sounds have something in common with odours. They are hardly described with words, they are difficult to remember as such. But sometimes when hearing a familiar rustle, clink, crackle in the fireplace, as well as when comming accidentally across some forgotten scent, we can be surprised by liveliness of memories that are linked to these little sounds or smells.

The same sound can be beautiful and refreshing once, another time annoying. Some sounds are funny, other can provoke a chain of absurd associations resembling a dream. Landscapes and weather have their sound. But sounds can also exist on their own, independently. Independent of images. And independent of the so called music. They are kind of music even more abstract then music itself, in spite of that they consist of voices of very concrete objects.

I remember well my first great experience originating from the harmony of concrete sounds. It happened during the time when waste was everything that people threw away and no sorting based on materials existed. And such diverse waste was pouring out of garbage cans in front of our school (I might have been about 12 years old) into the bowels of a garbage truck paying its regular visit there. The truck, absorbing a mix of bottles, cans, boards, rotten carrots, teddy bears and silver tubes of lipstick (sent to the garbage clearly just by accident as I learned later), resonated with absolutely fantastic chords of cracking, crunching, grinding and creaking, shaking, clinking and dark rumbling, from time to time punctuated by a blow from a blunt object. I suddenly realized that I listened with the same enthusiasm as if I were at a real concert.

Interesting and rich sounds may be met everywhere. Because they often appear unexpectedly it is worth walking with “ears open”. In this internet gallery I would like to share those few examples that I happened not only to hear but to record, too.

Enjoy listening!

Jiří Lindovský