Andrew Bird — Echolocations: Canyon
- Location
- Coyote Gulch, Utah
- Release
- Wegawam Music Co.
Andrew Bird stood in the water of Coyote Gulch in southern Utah and played violin into the canyon. There is no reverb unit on the record. The sandstone does all of it, and Bird plays to the delay the rock returns, phrasing around a decay he cannot adjust.
The result is a fully instrumental album, the first in a planned five-part Echolocations series conceived as a set of site-specific performances rather than conventional records. Titles such as "The Canyon Wants to Hear C Sharp" describe the method exactly: the space had resonant frequencies, and Bird played the ones it favoured.
It appeared on Bird's own Wegawam Music Co. imprint in 2015 and reached wider physical release alongside its sequel, Echolocations: River, recorded under a bridge on the Los Angeles River, in 2017. City, Lake and Forest were planned to follow.
- Recorded on location inside the Coyote Gulch canyons of Utah, standing in the water.
- All reverberation is the natural acoustic of the canyon; no artificial reverb was added.
- Phrasing and note choice were dictated by the canyon's delay time and resonant frequencies.
- First instalment of a five-part site-specific series; Echolocations: River followed in 2017.
- 01Sweep the Field — 7:14
- 02Groping the Dark — 10:43
- 03Rising Water — 5:09
- 04Antrozous — 7:06
- 05The Return of Yawny — 3:47
- 06Before the Germans Came — 8:04
- 07The Canyon Wants to Hear C Sharp — 8:52
- Violin, whistling, composition
- Andrew Bird
- Label
- Wegawam Music Co.
- Series
- Echolocations, part one of five