Sampling the World’s Quietest Climate Change Threat (Beat The Odds)

Check out the “Soundscapes: Permafrost” pack out now on Splice:
https://on.splice.com/4lHGs1g

Beat The Odds is a new video series by Splice that attempts to go places where music has never gone by answering bizarre questions or trying unusual challenges. In this Beat The Odds, we follow producer and instrumentalist Charles Van Kirk as he travels across Alaska and tries to capture the hidden sounds of Permafrost, a silent but deadly climate change threat, and tries to somehow make music from it.

Some parts of climate change are easy to visualize: glaciers melting, rising sea levels, catastrophic storms. Permafrost is not one of those things; it is sometimes referred to as an “invisible threat.” Permafrost is any ground that remains frozen for at least 2 years. There are approximately 9 million square miles of area covered by permafrost – nearly the size of the United States, China, and Canada combined. What happens when global temperatures rise and permafrost starts to thaw? It is estimated that permafrost holds nearly twice as much carbon frozen in the ground as exists in the atmosphere right now, so when it thaws it releases that carbon (among other gases), leading to more global warming, creating a sort of vicious cycle. Hence, the invisible threat.

Charles Van Kirk along with composer David Crowell and Splice’s team traveled to Alaska to try and sonify that invisible threat. They met with scientists at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and interviewed them about permafrost research, they recorded extensive field recordings in and around Denali National Park, featuring saxophone performances by Crowell, an Alaska native. Once back in the studio, Van Kirk produced and mixed this sample pack, creating a Sensory Percussion instrument using the field recordings and doing extensive re-sampling and processing of Crowell’s saxophones. The end result is an extraordinary and experimental pack, Soundscapes: Permafrost.

FILM BY:
Charles Van Kirk @charlesvankirk @charlesvankirk (IG)

PHOTOGRAPHY BY:
Max Belau
Charles Van Kirk

ADDITONAL PHOTOGRAPHY BY:
Gideon Elron
Taylor Roades (@taylorroades IG)

SPECIAL THANKS TO:
Dr. Vladimir Romanovsky
Dr. David Crowell
Davyd Betchkal
Melissa Ward Jones
The University of Alaska Fairbanks
The National Park Service

#sounddesign #fieldrecordings #musicproducer #musicproduction #climatechange #climateaction #alaska #naturesounds