The world itself is a recording studio for the experimental musicians of Field Works. Synthesising audio field recordings, interviews and visual documentation, the collective uses observation and experimentation as the basis for a new kind of site-responsive music. The Omniphonic Reader accompanies the launch of a seven-album box set by Field Works and provides insight into and context for this unique musical project.
Interdisciplinary artist and Grammy-nominated musician Stuart Hyatt leads Field Works and contributes a complete track-by-track guide to the box set, addressing from many angles the interpretation of place through sound. Renowned naturalist Bernie Krause writes the book's foreword, establishing a taxonomy of the soundscapes explored in the book's original essays: geophony (earth sounds), biophony (animal sounds), anthropophony (human sounds) and cosmophony (sounds from outer space).
Edited and designed by Janneane and Benjamin Blevins of PRINTtEXT, the book features contributions from Cheryl Tipp, Leah Barclay, Gustavo Valdivia, Enrique Ramirez, Yiorgis Sakellariou, Sarah Laskow, Stuart Fowkes, Budhaditya Chattopadhyay, Manuja Waldia, Elana Schlenker and Peter Liversidge.
The Omniphonic Reader is released in partnership with Brooklyn-based record label Temporary Residence and includes audio downloads of the entire Field Works collection, featuring never-before-heard music from Juana Molina, The Field, Lali Puna, Pantha du Prince, Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith, Eluvium, Dan Deacon, Matmos, Dntel, Gazelle Twin, Visible Cloaks, The Album Leaf, Loscil, Paul De Jong, Mary Lattimore, Lusine, B Fleischmann, William Tyler, Nick Zammuto, Rafiq Bhatia, Lullatone, Benoit Pioulard, Luke Abbott, Marcus Fischer, Rafael Anton Irisarri, Julien Marchal and many others.