How A Collection Of Threatened Bird Calls Swept The Australian Album Charts

Short Wave

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🗓️ 2 March 2022

⏱️ 14 minutes

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Summary

What bird has a ten-foot wingspan and breeds almost exclusively on a single island in the Pacific Ocean? Find out in this special quiz episode of Short Wave. Host Emily Kwong tests the bird knowledge of musician and nature enthusiast Anthony Albrecht. He recently produced an album of 53 calls from threatened Australian birds to bring awareness to their vulnerable status.

Listen to the album, titled Songs of Disappearance, released by the Bowerbird Collective and BirdLife Australia, here.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to Shortwave from NPR.
0:05.0	Hey Shortwaveers, it's Emily Kwong.
0:08.6	So back in December 2021, the music sales chart in Australia was pretty predictable.
0:15.9	A Dell's album, 30, was number one.
0:21.6	No surprises there.
0:23.1	Followed by Ed Sheeran's album, Equals.
0:30.1	By mid-month, there was an upset, a whole new sound flew to number three, surpassing
0:36.6	none other than Taylor Swift.
0:41.6	You could call songs of disappearance a concept album, and the artists have been fine-tuning
0:46.5	their craft for millions of years.
0:49.5	This album consists entirely of Australian bird songs.
0:56.5	There's just an absolutely incredible sounds being made by threatened Australian birds,
1:05.0	and they need to be heard.
1:11.0	Anthony Albrecht was a co-producer on the album, which was released by Birdlife Australia
1:16.7	and the Bauer Bird Collective.
1:19.2	An organisation that connects people to conservation issues through art.
1:24.1	Simone's lottery, my co-founder and I, were actually musicians.
1:29.4	Being musicians, I guess we love to listen to things, and one of the most awesome things
1:34.1	about being Australian is our soundscape.
1:41.2	And whenever we've travelled or lived overseas, it's the thing we've missed the most about
1:47.5	this country.
1:52.7	So today, on the wings of Songbird, we travel to Australia with Anthony Albrecht.
	...

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