The Best Field Recordings on Bandcamp, August 2024

Fletina and Peter Wullen Trophallaxis Trophallaxis is the process of sharing food among social insects like ants, termites, or bees. For the Scottish sound artist Fletina and Belgian field recordist Peter Wullen, though, it also describes the back-and-forth of ideas between collaborating artists, the sharing of materials that keeps the project productive. The title was inspired by one of the sources here, a beehive at Ghent’s Klein Begijnhof, a type of convent for lay religious women dating from 1235. But the trophallaxis between artists means that many more sounds were shared from towns scattered across the UK and Belgium. We hear water dripping in a cemetery, people talking, birds singing, and throughout, the repeated bell-ringing and calling of a priest from Bela Tarr’s epic film Sátántangó. The effect is like traveling back in time to that convent, where the only news comes from what you can hear around you: overheard conversations, messages from the town crier, and what can be gleaned from the buzzing of bees or the cawing of crows.