CUCUSONIC

Cucusonic is an album of music derived from and incorporating Colombian nature recordings, created in collaboration between bioscientists, anthropologists, and musicians.

“Cucu”: the onomatopoeic Spanish word for the sound made by amphibians.
”Sonic”: the nature of sound.

The album was made possible through the work of Cucusonic, a Colombia-based interdisciplinary art-science collective, led by Alejandro Valencia-Tobon, with Carlos Restrepo, Danny Zurc and Ana María Gómez. They were supported by the Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology at the University of Manchester, led by Rupert Cox. If you want to know more about the Cucusonic collective please contact cucusonic@gmail.com

The Cucusonic team set up a network with diverse local communities to collect and record sounds and stories from the Colombian Neotropical forests. These natural and bio-acoustic recordings were later shared with In Place of War and the musicians on this album during the challenging conditions of the Covid period. The aim of the project, and the resulting album, is to raise awareness about the biodiversity of Colombia, and its importance globally - by translating natural soundscape recordings and bioacoustic data into new music. You can watch a film about the project via the Cucusonic website.

Cucosonic features artists, including Bræv, Brian Eno, Coldcut, Fer Isella, Fingathing, Iggor Cavalera, Kate Simko, Laima Leyton, Martyn Ware, Matthew Dear, Mexican Institute of Sound, and Osunlade.