From Dead Minds comes “Frogs, a Selection of Field Recordings”, a truly startling body of work and the first ever vinyl release dedicated to the field recordings made by the Dutch physicist and interdisciplinary artist Felix Hess. Drawing on a body of field recordings begun in the Australian outback, sometime during the mid 1970s, rooted in Hess’ fascination with how the waves and rhythms of frog choruses could emerge without a conductor or a score and by the physics of this method of communication, the six pieces comprised by the album are an engrossing immersion into the abstractions and musical possibilities presented by the natural world.

Nearly since the advent of musique concrete during the 1940s, and gathering considerably more focus and clarity through John Cage's indication of the musical value of everyday, environmental sounds, the art of field recording has remained a central practice for innumerable artists within the fields of avant-garde and experimental sound practice. Most commonly deployed as material within collage or in conjunction with instrumental sound sources, along the way a handful of artists have embarked upon a particularly brave and insightful approach of presenting their recordings with little to no intervention as a means to highlight the musicality and abstract qualities of the natural or industrial worlds. One such case was the Dutch artist and scientist Felix Hess, who during the 1970s began recording choruses of frogs, which were issued as highly limited and now sought after cassette releases between 1982 and 1991. Now, bringing the celebration and attention they deserve, the Dutch imprint, Dead Minds, in collaboration with Frans de Waard and Mark Poysden who maintain the artist’s sound archive, deliver “Frogs, a Selection of Field Recordings”, the first release to bring these scarce and sinfully under-celebrated recordings into the world on glorious vinyl.

Felix Hess lived a fascinating double life. Trained as a physicist, following his PHD - 1975 for a groundbreaking study into aerodynamics and movement of boomerangs - he worked as a mathematician at the University of Adelaide in Australia. Not long after his arrival, he encountered the choruses of frogs for the first time, generating amazing natural rhythms and waves of spatial sounds in the hills around Adelaide, and began to travel to the outback to record similar frog choruses, pursuing the nightly concerts that they produced.

It was these encounters that sparked Hess’ longstanding work as a sound and installation artist, first using his research into the phenomenon produced by frogs to design and building small electronic sound creatures that could respond to each other in a similar way. These objects and other installations earned him international acclaim.

“Frogs, a Selection of Field Recordings”, is the first vinyl release to be dedicated to Hess’ incredible field recordings of frog choruses. While serving to offer potent insight into the encounters that inspired a stunning and singular body of creative output, they also stand entirely on their own as engrossing works of art, serving to further expand understanding of a field also occupied by Ann McMillan’s seminal 1979 LP, “Gateway Summer Sound: Abstracted Animal and Other Sounds”, Sounds of North American Frogs (Folkways, 1958), and contributed to, in various ways by artists like Knud Viktor, Joshua Bonnetta, Alan Lamb, Maggi Payne, Loren Chasse, Christina Kubisch, Lionel Marchetti, and numerous others.

The six pieces comprised by “Frogs, a Selection of Field Recordings” are a near perfect illumination of the 20th Century notion - embraced within numerous practices of the sonic avant-garde - that all sonorous material, regardless of origin, has significant musical value or potential. Remarkably varied and distinct from one another, each of the LP’s recordings ripples with a striking range of tonality and texture. So distinct and rich, were we not aware that these were different kinds of frogs, it would be often hard to place their source - at times feeling like the products of electronics and at others the result of some unconventional use of acoustic instruments - culminating as an engrossing lens into the symphony of the natural world, that is all too often overlooked.

Hugely significant on historical terms, drawing much needed attention to Felix Hess’ significant contribution to experimental sound practice and the field recording at large, “Frogs, a Selection of Field Recordings”, is one of those records that shifts everything you think you know about sound and the world around us.