Q&A Chaired by Xanthe Fuller

From the cacophonous surrounds of London to the sea stacks of Orkney, via the abandoned military facilities of the Suffolk coast and the watery expanses of the Blackwater Estuary in Essex, from the quarries and neolithic sites of Snowdonia and the wide open skies of Norfolk to the hubbub of Nairobi and Berlin, the streets of Kyiv and the windblown wilds of Antarctica - music is everywhere. You just need to know or learn how to listen.

For the biggest artists to the most underground, field recordings have become the vital spark of electronic music. Whether documenting nature, sampling the city or capturing the atmosphere of archaeological sites, musicians are using found sounds to make sense of our world. Ears To The Ground explores the relationship between electronics, landscape and field recordings in the UK, Ireland and around the globe, discovering how producers and artists evoke the natural world, history and folklore through sampled sounds.

Ears To The Ground: Adventures in Field Recording and Electronic Music explores how electronic music producers and sound artists use field recordings and samples to document their environments. Author Ben Murphy takes you on a journey to discover how field recordings can create context, emotion, atmosphere, humour and meaning - and examine the most pressing topics of our times.

Composed of extensive interviews with music producers, the book will show how field recordings have become a vital way of understanding, celebrating and interrogating the landscape and the places we live. The book features interviews with Leafcutter John, KMRU, Ultramarine, Kate Carr, Erland Cooper, Proc Fiskal, Flora Yin-Wong, Langham Research Centre, Claire Guerin, Toshiya Tsunoda, Lawrence English, Heinali, Oliver Ho, Matthew Herbert, Matmos, Scanner, Felicia Atkinson and many more.On its journey, the book takes in abandoned military test sites, remote bird colonies, estuaries, cities, coastlines, old quarries, neolithic burial grounds, scientific research centres and docklands, and ventures between Orkney, Edinburgh and Cork to Norfolk, Kent and Snowdonia, before heading to Kenya, Ukraine, Japan and Antarctica.

Obsessed with hip-hop from the age of 12, Ben Murphy caught the music bug early and started collecting records of all kinds as a teenager. Immersing himself in club culture, drum & bass, techno and trip-hop, he voraciously consumed music magazines, and set his sights on becoming a writer, specialising in electronic and dance sounds. After writing reviews and features for blogs and online fanzines, he became news editor at DJ Magazine, and eventually editor-in-chief at the title. He has been writing about music for over 20 years and has contributed to The Guardian, Crack, Time Out, Bandcamp Daily, Knowledge, Electronic Sound, FACT, Red Bull Music Academy, Clash, i-D and Vinyl Factory.

XANTHE FULLER:
Xanthe’s appreciation of music and the creatives involved has spanned her work and personal life. She initially produced radio shows for the likes of Radio 1, 1Xtra and 6Music, ran one of the original online radio stations (Strongroom Alive in Shoreditch) and presented her own radio show for Soho Radio. These days she works at Mixcloud and DJ’s a bit for fun. Throughout her career she has conducted interviews with musicians and DJs; from jazz artists featured on Jamie Cullum’s Radio 2 show, through live guests on her show, to panels and live talks.