East Asia PhoNographic Mornings #19 - Patrick Franke 'Bayankhongorijn Khukh Nuur'

Stéphane Marin presents a weekly series of fifteen short soundscapes recorded in the mornings at various locations throughout East Asia. This series for Resonance Extra forms part of a wider project, 'Each Morning of the World', which invites sound artists, composers and recordists globally to share their own specific point of listening, either through a raw field recording or original composition.

In this episode, 'Bayankhongorijn Khukh Nuur' by Patrick Franke.

"In 2013 I took part in an expedition to Central Mongolia. I was focussing on sound recordings to clarify the taxonomic status of some species based on bioacoustics or even to make first ever recordings."

Amongst other places we went to an alpine area surrounding the lake Bayankhongorijn Khukh Nuur. As days during expeditions are usually very packed, time for recordings of the general soundscape or even enjoying that just by listening is very limited. Thus, this excerpt of an one hour recording is a rather rare exception.

My aim was to document the soundscape of this particular spot after capturing vocalisations of most of it's inhabitants discretely. Furthermore this recording of a sparsely populated habitat should scrutinise Bernie Krauses 'acoustic niche' theory which is mostly based on data from densely populated habitats."

Patrick Franke is a freelance ornithologist and sound recordist based in Berlin, Germany.