4:18 am

My thoughts and attention often turn to the dawn chorus at this time of year. Our biosphere may be crashing but the early birds still manage to sound particularly glorious in our neighbourhood — admittedly not as glorious as they once sounded but it’s one of life’s joys nonetheless.

Anyway, I was rummaging on the Audio page the other day and stumbled across this recording along with the accompanying notes.

I feel it deserves its own blog post to bring this dreamy moment to the fore. As Kae Tempest went on to write in the song Grace from the album The Line Is A Curve:

There are things I must record, must praise
There are things I have to say about the fullness and the blaze
Of this beautiful life, of this beautiful life

Saturday 25th April 2020, 4:18 am: This morning, I got up early to record the dawn chorus as part of Ambient Isolation’s lockdown sound project for International Dawn Chorus Day on 3rd May.

The stipulated time was to record from 5-7 am but I decided to start earlier so that I could make this one minute recording at 4:18 am.

Why?

Well, I’m a big fan of Kae Tempest’s album Let Them Eat Chaos, a concept album about seven strangers living in South London.

The events told within the tracks all take place at the very specific time of 4:18 am.

Kae explains:

“At that time in the morning, people are open with their vulnerabilities because they are not in the previous day or the coming day. The day doesn’t belong to anyone yet.“

I love that sentiment, so I wanted to experience — and record — that very specific time of day as a nod to their incredible album.