Aquarius Records

The first recording in the Sublime Frequencies catalog to not focus on the noise people make, Broken Hearted Dragonflies gives a voice to our insect brethren in Southeast Asia, as recorded by Tucker Martine in Laos, Burma and Thailand in 2000. The disc starts off like any other "traditional" insect recording: lots of cicada-like whining and chirping, but gradually turns to sound unlike all the rest. As one particular insect in the field begins to slowly sweep up in pitch like an oscillator on a synthesizer. A short time later, the clashing buzz of insect varieties begins to grate against their own harmonies and sounds much like either a clever DSP patch or the aliasing sound of a poorly sampled instrument. In other words, it all sounds hardly organic. In fact, in the field recording genre, we'd have to place this one in the same bizarre category as Douglas Quin's Antarctica recordings. The Raster-Noton sounds of nature. We're periodically reminded of our bucolic setting only by the steady hoots and coos of the native birds. You will undoubtably share our initial skepticism regarding the purity of these field recordings, but it is emphatically stated by the recordist that "these recordings were not processed, the insects actually sound like this!" Absolutely amazing stuff! Features liner notes by none other than Hakim Bey.