Attenborough at 100: The Wild Life of Sound

On Sir David Attenborough's 100th birthday, Verity Sharp presents a mixtape that celebrates the ways in which recorded sound and acts of listening-imagining can bring us into a close relationship with other species. Assembled as a collaboration between artist and researcher Rebecca Lennon and writer Ella Finer, the mixtape moves through musical and sonic worlds that variously abstract, reimagine and commune with human and more than human presences. Breath, vibration, rhythm, waggle - we meet the heartbeat of a swan, the voice of a whale, the purr of a cheetah, the sonorous lives of bees, foxes and street dogs. Finer’s concept of “the wild life of sound” speaks to something that the sonic and the creaturely realms share in common: a freedom from ownership, a resistance to neat categorisation, a space where connection can happen.

Produced by Alex Yates
A Reduced Listening production for BBC Radio 3