Alexey Seliverstov: Bionic birdsong

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary, Personal Journals

4.3 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 13 October 2025

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

How fixed is the borderline between human music and the sounds of nature? That is a question that guides the work of Los Angeles-based composer Alexey Seliverstov. In this programme, Regan Morris follows Alexey’s creative process from recording the dawn chorus in the Santa Monica mountains, through the ingenious transformations of the field recordings to the finished multi-channel and multi-sensory installation for the Shelemay Sound Lab at Harvard University. There is more to Alexey’s music than first meets the ear: some of the ‘birds’ are actually the sounds of his own and his brother’s voices recorded when they were children and altered beyond recognition by Alexey’s sophisticated processing. Adding ear-prints of empty spaces to the sounds of chirping synthesisers, similar to the effect of repeated exposures on an old-fashioned camera film, draw us further into Alexey’s imaginary landscapes. Are these soundscapes artificial or still mostly natural? How does mixing the sounds of nature and sounds that we associate with humans, such as pianos, alter our idea of what music can be?

Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts.
0:12.4	The sun is just rising, and I'm listening to the most wonderful sounds I've heard in a long while.
0:19.7	I've lived in Los Angeles for decades,
0:21.8	and I've come here to the Santa Monica Mountains many times,
0:25.5	to hike, to bike, to admire the wildflowers
0:29.1	and the gorgeous green rolling hills.
0:32.2	But this is the first time that I've come here specifically
0:35.2	to listen to the dawn chorus.
0:42.1	Okay. the first time that I've come here specifically to listen to the Don Chorus. I'm Reagan Morris, and in this documentary in the studio from the BBC World Service,
0:47.8	I'll be following the work of the LA-based composer Alexei Selleverstov.
0:53.1	Alexi transforms birdsong into compositions that blur the boundaries between the sounds of nature
0:58.6	and human music.
1:00.5	Alexi, I can see or rather hear why you brought me here, but how did you find this place?
1:07.0	I found this place when I was looking for a spot without noises,
1:14.6	because Los Angeles is very sound-polluted.
1:18.6	I came here last year for the first time, and the place really surprised me,
1:25.6	because I felt like I'm listening to a symphony.
1:32.6	There were no cars and planes and maybe this is the best spot near Los Angeles.
1:40.3	I guess the big question is why birds? You don't look like the, I don't know what a
1:46.8	stereotypical bird watcher looks like, but you, you're young, you're tattooed, your hip,
1:51.5	you're, you don't look like what I would think of as a bird watcher. You're a bird listener,
1:56.7	is that right? Yeah, that's correct. I am a bird listener. I love the sounds of birds.
	...

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