Artist description Zoolophone is a beastly different approach to techno composed entirely of animal sounds, using no conventional musical instruments.

Music Style techno with electronic processing of animal sounds

Musical Influences Skeeter Davis, Sheryl Crow, Buck Owens, Robin Trower, Chick Correa, Gnat King Cole

Similar Artists The Eagles, The Byrds, Hootie and the Blowfish, The Stone Ponys, Three Dog Night

Artist History Zoolophone began as an experiment: Using loop-based music software, could one turn animal sounds into 'techno'? This project is meant to provide a tuneful answer. The impetus for this question was "Carnival Carnivores," a techno song by Saunk Hogben (another artistic incarnation), which incorporated various howls and growls. That's been done before, of course. The tradition of blending animal sounds into music has occasionally even ventured into techno. Utah Saints used whale songs (or something very similar) in "Trance Atlantic Flight" on its "Something Good" album (London Records). And Hope made catchy use of a "ribbit" in its "Tree Frog" trance mix on "Classic Techno Traxx" (ZYX Music). But could music - even up-tempo dance tunes - be derived exclusively from animal sounds? An Internet search found few who'd tried. The closest match was a "B. Perovsek" on the Slovene Museum of Natural History website (www2.arnes.si/~ljprirodm3/okvir.html). This composer is credited with a "bioacoustic composition" (file name "dotiki.rm") using over a dozen animal musicians, but the piece also uses more conventional instruments (synthesizer and accordion). WILD WORLD, however, uses no such instruments. Every song on this album consists entirely of sounds produced by animals in the course of vocalization, locomotion, echo-location, or percussion. These are all derived from public domain and other royalty-free animal recordings. This album includes sounds that range from the unaltered to the heavily processed. Some should be completely familiar. A few - mainly the percussions - may be too heavily distorted by effects to be recognizable as animals. But the majority of the sounds should still be identifiable. Processing and composition were aided immeasurably by Sonic Foundry's excellent music creation software. This company's ACID Music 3.0, ACID Style 2.0, and Sound Forge 5.0 were invaluable in this album's production. Indeed, without this technology - in which Sonic Foundry excels at being simple and intuitive - WILD WORLD could not have been made. To my knowledge, this is the first such project of its kind. I'd appreciate emails (to WeddingtonR@aol.com) from anyone involved in, or knowing of, similar pursuits.

Group Members Tony, Elsie, Kermit, Yogi, Michigan J., Tom, Leo, Huckleberry, and the rest of the gang.

Instruments birds, insects, reptiles, amphibians, and mammals

Albums Wild World

Location Eureka Springs, Arkansas - USA

Copyright notice. All material on MP3.com is protected by copyright law and by international treaties. You may download this material and make reasonable number of copies of this material only for your own personal use. You may not otherwise reproduce, distribute, publicly perform, publicly display, or create derivative works of this material, unless authorized by the appropriate copyright owner(s).