I stumbled across Ian Hawgood’s work some months ago, and I ended up quite enjoying it, mainly because of the soft, gentle, natural droning sounds he comes up with. It’s best to read about his methodology below. From his Bandcamp site:
“During the first lockdown here in the UK, I found myself awake around 4am most days. I often go to my studio or go for a walk to record bird song at these times to relax and on two occasions I actually recorded these early morning sessions.
Both recordings were done using steel tongue drums with my studio windows open. I mic’ed up the drum in front of the window with a pair of DPA 4060 lavalier microphones hanging from the window close to one of the bird feeding areas in our garden. The sparrows in the nest opposite always come to join me on my window sill when I play the drum or guitar, and the freckles and clicks of sound you can hear in ‘Fractural’ are them landing on or near the microphones.
The additional textures in ‘Textural’ were done using hyrdrophones in the shallow waters while the tide was out at a local beach. The drum elements were edited using looping pedals to create more drone-like tones compared to ‘Fractural’.”
