In stock
2 CD
Marc NAMBLARD
“L’autre rive”
14-track album + 15-track bonus album
20-page booklet with translations of Wayãpi songs and dialogues into French / Booklet also available in English
At the end of 2023, Marc Namblard set out to record sounds in French Guiana for the purposes of a documentary film. Through a series of circumstances, he found himself in Bas-Oyapock with director Kevin Brunet to meet Sara and Saraka, a couple of Wayãpi originally from Brazil. They both shared the lives of their hosts for two weeks, engaging in traditional activities (preparing cachiri and cassava, maintaining the garden, singing, dancing...) along with «troubling» experiences and daily gestures...
From this stay, The Other Bank was born, a sound piece where the forest, the river, and both human and non-human voices intertwine and merge, inseparable, without any hierarchy, while simultaneously offering a testimony of a relationship with the world on the brink of vanishing...
17,00€
Out of stock
CD
Marc NAMBLARD
“Arctic Summer”
2025 was declared the International Year of Glaciers’ Preservation by the United Nations, accompanied by the proclamation of March 21st of each year as the World Day for Glaciers starting this year. As they put it, “this is an opportunity to raise global awareness about the critical role of glaciers, snow and ice in the climate system and the hydrological cycle, and the economic, social and environmental impacts of the impending changes in the Earth’s cryosphere.” To celebrate this decision forms of minutiae presents a series of albums dedicated to glaciers and the acoustic multiplicity of the ice with field recording works by Marc Namblard, Ludwig Berger, Yoichi Kamimura, Pablo Diserens, and Cheryl E. Leonard.
Sprinkled throughout the year, the series launches on World Day of Glaciers with the album arctic summer, a journey across the sonic ecologies of Iceland and Svalbard, by wildlife sound recordist and nature guide Marc Namblard.
Arctic summer and its 12 tracks form a long continuous piece which unfolds in a documentary fashion. Here, Namblard’s pristine recordings invite listeners into the estival effervescence of the two polar islands. Scenes follow one another in a delicate but bustling volcanic, animal, and glacial tapestry, whose dimensions materialize through the artist’s play on perspective and space. This meticulous composition enables us to eavesdrop both on the vastness and the minute of the cryosphere and the life it fosters. Birds and mammals cadence the album with distinct acoustic behaviors. The air is filled with puffin wing flutters, arctic tern shrills, golden plover sharp pings, kittiwake nasal cries, and the uncanny winnowing sound of common spines. Below, an arctic fox calls in the twilight, a whale spouts off the coast, and walruses growl, grunt, and exhale like washed up steaming engines. Yet these animal voices aren’t sounding alone. They are enveloped by the voices of geologies. Pebble-laden tides lead us to the beating volcanic heart that lies beneath the ground. Geothermal mud pools bubble in viscous drummings, while sulphur vents whistle in perpetual sighs. There are whispers in the slurry. The scorched soil swells. The Earth sizzles. Geyser!
This scalding soundscape gradually evaporates into the heat of summer, bringing about the melting of the ice. In doing so, the ice shares a splendid variety both in form and sound. Glaciers crash in thundering calvings, icebergs drift in fizzling growls, while the moraine trickles in curtains of drops. The landscape thaws and leaks. The glaciers thin. The Earth oozes.
This melting pot of arctic bioacoustics weaves into an imaginary sound walk across the tundra, making Namblard’s profound affection for the environment palpable. His uncompromising delicacy is an invitation to listen to the cryosphere in order to better understand and nurture it. A cinema for the ears, arctic summer is a time capsule that maps the fragile soundscapes and ecosystems of a changing world.
12,00€
In stock
CD
Marc NAMBLARD
“Brames”
Brames brings together a series of recordings on the theme of the bellowing of the red deer, collected in different forest areas of France (in the Vosges, Loiret and Lozère) between 2011 and 2023.
12,00€
Out of stock
CD
Marc NAMBLARD
“Chants of frozen lakes”
“Marc Namblard, sound artist and naturalist living in the northeast of France, has spent several years listening to and recording an acoustic phenomenon occuring in the winter time. The tiniest crackles inside the ice of frozen lakes produce mechanical vibrations. Under specific atmospheric conditions, these impulses propagate in the ice, whose tension makes it similar to the skin of a drum. The acoustic result is an unbelievable blend of drumming sounds and etheral resonances. This cd retraces the whole phenomena: in 55 minutes, one can discover the different steps of what happened at Lac de Pierre Percée (a lake close to Marc’s village) on the 16th of January 2006. It began with the frost falling on the vegetation accompanied by birds in the distance. The first brief percussive sounds announced the ice beginning its work under the first sunrays. A little bit later, the ice started to crackle : sounds became longer and more intense. At the end of the session, ice was breaking everywhere, the lake was singing. The phenomenon vanished with the appearance of a slight breeze. This soundwork gathers some of the most beautiful moments of hours and hours of Marc’s recordings into a whole piece, but there was no processing or overdub in the production of this publication : the aim is to propose to the listener an experience of what he would expect in the front of the lake (with the exception of the temperature). Marc’s recording technique is based on ORTF stereo configuration using condenser microphones and high-end preamplifiers. “Chants Of Frozen Lakes” can easily be classified in the domains of Naturalism, since it is based on straight observation of natural events, and in the field of Sound Art as it proposes a very intense listening experience. Therefore, this cd should delight listeners of nature sound recording, experimental music as well as electronica.”
10,00€
Out of stock
CD
Marc NAMBLARD
“Nuits de Guyane”
“Nuits de Guyane” is a sound collage of night time ambiances from Guiana (France), focusing on the calls of amphibians.
Field recordings realized in the forests and savannah near Sinnamary and Saül, close to the Saint-Elie trail and Savane Roche Virginie, from November 15th to December 10th 2014, between the dry season and the “little rainy season”.
10,00€
Out of stock
CD
Marc NAMBLARD
“F.Guyana”
One CD + digital bonus. 500 copies.
The field recordings of « F.Guyana » have been realized in the forests and the costal regions of French Guiana between the dry season and the « little rainy season » (November/December 2014, 2015 and 2016).
Marc Namblard was born in Paris in October 1973. He grew up mostly in Loiret, (Central France) but spent most of his holidays with his family in the Cévennes, south eastern France. It is certainly in these rugged yet generous mountains that his sensitivity to nature asserted itself little by little. After his baccalaureate in literature, visual arts and art history, he studied at l’École de l’Image d’Épinal, a visual arts school. During his 21-month non-military national service in an outdoor education centre, he discovered the job of environmental educator. After his national service, Marc completed his studies at the Fine Art School of Épinal and gained a National diploma in visual arts in June 2000. Sound then began to take an increasingly bigger place in his own work.
In the following years, Marc moved away from Fine arts to work as an environmental educator for popular education organisations. At the same time, he met many people interested in sound art and wildlife recording. Since then, his work has been characterised by a dual approach, naturalist and musical, rational yet intuitive. Depending on projects, one approach prevails but never takes over the other completely.
Since 2000, Marc has been living and working as a nature guide, wildlife sound recordist and sound artist in Lorraine (Eastern France).
15,00€