Dawn chorus recorded in Mount Buangor State Park, Western Victoria, December 2018.This soundtrack features kookaburras, magpies, black cockatoos and a high pitched backing track courtesy of some superb fairy wrens. If you listen carefully, you may even hear a lyrebird.Thanks for listening!To support our work, please donate a coffee or two at https://echoactive.com/donateWe've also got a 2.5 hour journey recorded in Toolangi, in Victoria's lush cool-temperate rainforest. Join our community to get access. Visit https://echoactive.com for more info

In every country lockdowns are progressively lifting but it seems that we still have to stay at home a bit longer, its still uncertain for our club scene.

Times are strange. We all have to push ourselves forward digitally in order to maintain a "Social DJ Life," which reveals how our social image and music are intrinsically connected; the status of a DJ becomes instantly meaningless without actual people gathering and communing through music.

With the overflowing amount of information, it is sometimes easy to get lost in an endless consumption of content.

I am of course, also part of this social media game, and thought a bit about what I wanted to present within these messy times, I decided to compile a mix of birds singing to help relaxation.

Now that cities are running at idle speed, nature is slowly coming back through unexpected forms:

Butterflies can live their life without getting hit by a car, plants are retaking what is theirs and birds fly and parade in front of us, not nagging us but just beautifully expressing their freedom.

This mix idealises my dream journey in nature after lockdown, with all its phases, from apprehension to hope.

I hope you, like me, enjoy the original singers of this world.

This includes a recording I made at the botanical garden of Melbourne when I toured Australia in May 2018.

Thank you

In the hill rainforests of north-eastern Sabah, tiny Bornean Treehole Frogs (Metaphrynella sundana) call to create a magical nocturnal soundscape.

In order to make their calls as loud as possible, males of this species adjust the frequency of their 'toop' call to match the natural resonance of the small water-filled treehole they live inside. Often a number of males can be heard calling from different sized holes in the same area, creating a delightful soundscape of 'toop' notes at various pitches.

Composed and performed by Mike de Sousa

Piano Improvisation

~

As I hear I become. For all the words I write, music needs no thought.

To be well: to be healthy in body, mind, and spirit.

Caring at its most beautiful is for something or for someone other than myself.

With music, if I am open, I hear, I feel, and I become.

~

Enjoy the music together with accompanying artwork and my thoughts:

http://www.100artworks.today/Be Well.html

To discover more about Mike visit his site at:

www.mikedesousa.com

Composed and performed by Mike de Sousa

Solo Violin, Strings, Woodwind, Brass, and Piano.

~

Tide: the rise and fall of sea; a change of state, physical or emotional; a period of time.

I ponder on the beauty of the rise and fall of water, our contact with the force of moon, the spin of earth, and pull of sun.

I think of how love can be as endless in its movement dependent on another, of how I feel as creature of the shore, by nature washed between the land and sea.

~

Enjoy the music together with an accompanying artwork:

http://www.100artworks.today/RisingTide.html

To discover more about Mike visit his site at:

www.mikedesousa.com

In the Australian winter, Pied Currawongs often form flocks and search out fruiting trees to raid. I set up my recording gear in front of a native Lilli Pilli tree in full fruit, and it was only a matter of time before the currawongs arrived and enjoyed one of their winter parties!

3 minute audio sample from the 79 minute nature sound album; "The Whistlers of Kolombangara", available for download from http://www.listeningearth.com/LE/product.php?id=110

The song of the Golden Whistlers of the Solomon Islands is one of nature's marvels.

This recording takes you to the island of Kolombangara to experience their melodic, rhythmic (and very loud!) voices reverberating through the rainforests that cloak the island's volcanic flanks.

We begin predawn, with a hypnotic chorus of frogs and insects in the tropical night. Suddenly a Whistler breaks the calm with an exuberant ripple of sound that sends a shiver up the spine. From then on there's no stopping him, as he pours out a sequence of percussive melodies at high volume.

As the day moves on, the whistlers ease back, and a variety of birdsong filters down from the forest canopy - Lorikeets, Mynahs, Flycatchers, Hornbills, White-eyes, Pigeons, Cockatoos - along with the gentle buzz of diurnal insects.

With the afternoon, we hear one of the other unusual voices of these forests; the harsh growls and booming calls of the Buff-headed Coucal. A Whistler gives some last calls as the light begins to fade and the electric vibration of dusk cicadas fills the air. After dark, the forest is filled with frogs once again, this time a multitude of chiming 'Koni' frogs.

I made an early start this morning, arriving at the Royal National Park by 5am. Still dark and quiet, I walked down Lady Carrington Drive and soon heard the distinctive call of a Powerful Owl (Ninox S