With the deeply immersive Wild Silence, we are given a glimpse of the world of Irish ornithologist and sound recordist Seán Ronayne, who captures the sound of nature without anthropogenic noise. This immersive album precedes his memoir, Nature Boy: A memoir of birdsong and belonging.
Since its release in 2013, Silence, a quasi-documentary from Cork-born filmmaker Pat Collins, has drawn me back time and again. The vast dramatic landscapes of Ireland and widescreen cinematography make the life and work of Eoghan, a sound recordist who returns to Ireland after 15 years in the hope of capturing the sounds of places that are free from anthropogenic noise, seem like an inconsequential blip in the vastness of it all – both landscape and time. The film is unrushed and warps your concept of time, drawing you into moments of stillness and contemplation – a perfect companion to equally transformative favourites: Wim Wenders’s recent Perfect Days and Ben Rivers’ Two Years At Sea. For reasons that will become apparent, Silence was the film that first sprung to mind after reading about Irish ornithologist and sound recordist Seán Ronayne.
I naively learned how difficult it is to avoid anthropogenic noise in recordings a few years ago. My youngest son had started work at stables, and once a week, I’d drop him off at the crack of dawn and, on my return journey, I’d stop to walk in woodlands in the Quantock Hills in Somerset armed with my field recorder, stands and mics. You quickly realise why field recording is often a solo activity; microphones are non-cognitive, so while a plane flying overhead or the sound of tyres on tarmac from a distant passing car distracts, the bigger challenge was removing my own presence – breathing, moving – the sound of rain falling on waterproof fabric, which, in my mind, warmly conjures teen years spent sheltering from the rain in a tent on a hillside at the weekend, is nothing like the softened sound of rain falling on moss. It was far easier, and more rewarding, to intentionally place myself in the recording – walking along a woodland path, brushing past ferns, pausing to hear a tawny owl – my recordings were more akin to a non-vocal audio diary. While I was a million miles away from mastering the fieldcraft of totally obscuring my presence – a fete that seems second nature to the likes of sound recordist and Cabaret Voltaire founder Chris Watson, I still enjoyed the experience. Anything that brings you closer to nature has to be a good thing, and it also left me with an increased respect for those who spend many hours and days patiently making these recordings.
Listening to field recordings impacts us all in different ways. While sound is ephemeral, it has the power to transport us and alter our reality. Sound activates our neural pathways, activating different parts of our brain, leading to very individual and unique experiences – yes, we all experience sound differently. In David Toop’s Ocean of Sound (ambient sound and radical listening in the age of communication), he describes how sounds altered his reality while in hospital: “…sitting quietly in never-never land…Truthfully, I am lying in intensive care. Wired, plugged and electronically connected, I have glided from coma into a sonic simulation of past, and passed, life.”
A read of a recent Bandcamp editorial will give you an idea of the vast scale of these ‘field recordings from around the world, made by musicians and sound artists as well as professional field recordists’. It was on Bandcamp that I first came across Seán Ronayne.
Seán Ronayne is a young Irish ornithologist and sound recordist who loves “…to bring the sounds of nature to those who find themselves unable to venture out…”. His album, Wild Silence, features recordings of Irish wild soundscapes recorded in a variety of habitats. Like Eoghan in the Pat Collins film, Seán’s recordings are also free from sources of anthropogenic noise (hence the title). From listening to the album, you get a sense of a man who has covered many, many miles – from the sound of the ‘wild Atlantic – a brute force of nature to be reckoned with’ to the sublime sounds of a peat bog and a summer dawn chorus display.
The album also reflects his passion and dedication to nature, something that also comes across in the RTÉ interview below, in which he talks to Tommy Tiernan about his goal to record every Irish bird species and shares a special story about a migratory bird that mimics the sounds of others, bringing the songs of Senegal to Ireland.
Seán’s memoir, Nature Boy: A memoir of birdsong and belonging, will also be published by Hachette Ireland in October.
Ornithologist Seán Ronayne always knew he was different. While he struggled to fit in at school, when he was surrounded by nature, listening to birdsong, he felt a sense of calm and could truly be himself. His happiest times were spent walking in the woods with his father and grandfather, learning to identify the plants and birds around their home in Cork. Other children called him ‘Nature Boy’.
Seán went on to qualify as an ornithologist, dedicating his life to studying and photographing birds. When, at the age of thirty-two, he discovered he was autistic, his life began to make sense. He grew to recognize that his difference was a gift, enabling him to use his passion to help spread awareness of the beauty of the natural world – and the danger it currently faces.
In 2021, Seán set out on his mission to be the first to sound record all the regularly occurring bird species in Ireland: a journey of discovery and wonder that has taken him to the four corners of the country.
Order the book Nature Boy: A memoir of birdsong and belonging – Amazon | Bookshop.org
Order the album Wild Silence: Bandcamp
