*2026 stock* In this tribute to one of London's most beloved pieces of common land, Andrey Kiritchenko offers both an ode and a plea. Initially inspired by the role the Hackney Marshes played during the pandemic as a site of communal gathering and connection, Ultra Marshes celebrates the multiplicity of this parkland.
"It became very clear how essential it is for people to have shared experiences of music and how quickly we can lose what we take for granted," he explains. Listening deeply to the marshes over this period, Kiritchenko began to notice how present the sounds of human activities were in this patch of nature amid the city. "You cannot entirely separate yourself from the sounds of the city and listen solely to the noises of nature," Kiritchenko notes, so instead he resolved to explore the hybridity of co-existence at play in urban parklands.
The result is a collection of ultra-processed field recordings of helicopters, city traffic, sirens, passing trains, trees, logs and stems, grass, small insects, and birds—which frolic, mutate and co-mingle with the shimmering stabs and bifurcated burbles of synthesizers. Ultra Marshes is a celebration of co-existence, where the boundaries between the organic and the mechanical dissolve into layers of noisy harmonies and the human emerges as an entity as fully 'natural' as birdsong and wind.
"I hope to invite listeners to re-imagine their relationship with their surroundings and discover beauty in the unexpected interplay of the everyday," says Kiritchenko.