Sounding Wild: Axel Drioli's Sonic Journey into the Heart of Wildlife

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‘From his electronic music DJ beginnings in Trieste, Italy, to his current role as a wildlife sound recordist and artist, Axel Drioli's journey is a captivating blend of passion and purpose, alongside his brother and colleague Ario. Together, they collaborate on the project Sounding Wild, which employs innovative spatial audio techniques to capture the breathtaking soundscapes of nature, transforming them into immersive experiences and music.’

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Background

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I’m Axel Drioli, born in Trieste (Italy), a beautiful Italian city situated on the border with Slovenia. I’ve always been influenced with international music from a young age, italian music has pretty much never been part of our family music taste. In my teens I’ve been introduced to electronic music, specifically Daft Punk, that’s where I started DJing and really got into the scene, organising music events in Trieste.

But at some point, it felt like I had to go out and explore, learn how to speak English (non-existent back then). In 2013 I decided to take a one-way ticket to London, no idea what I would do, only that I wanted to become a famous electronic music DJ.

For our audience unfamiliar with your work, please describe your "Sounding Wild" project.

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Sounding Wild is my brand where I like to tell stories about and with wildlife sound. I am obsessed with sounds of animals, whatever animal, and I want to tell stories which involve their sounds, from films, to sound for films, music, podcasts, anything. I’m a multifaceted artist with an interest in sound and wildlife, so it is substantially my playground.

Sounding Wild Logo by Ario Drioli @aariopic

How did the idea for the Sounding Wild project come about? What was the inspiration behind it?

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It was back in 2019 when I started doing sound recording, sound and mixing for natural history documentaries, and I felt I needed a brand and a team to put together to work on this. This how Sounding Wild came about, a place where it’s not only about me, but it’s a mission that can grow and become something I can share with other people, collaborators, friends. I learnt it from previous experience, where it’s all good being a freelancer, but I wanted to create something which could be open to other collaborators to join also.

What first sparked your interest in using wildlife sounds?

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I studied Sound Engineering in East London, and while studying I came across Spatial Audio, the audio field which includes recording, processing and capturing techniques that go beyond current standard audio workflows. With Spatial Audio I don’t just capture a recording with two microphones to represent a space sonically, I can capture an entire ‘360 sound scene’, generally from a point, and I can replicate it very well over headphones or loudspeakers.

With this technology I was able to finally feel I was present somewhere sonically, something standard ‘stereo’ technologies don’t. I loved the technology, but I was trying to find a way to use it at its full potential. I tried it with music, film, field recording in the city, but all these were boring, or generally ‘front facing’, but I wanted to feel immersed sonically somewhere.

One day, by complete chance, I recorded a Dawn Chorus, when the birds wake up in the morning and start singing. It was the most present I felt sonically somewhere.

This brought me initially to be absolutely obsessed with recording sounds of nature, but soon I started asking myself the question ‘why are these animals making sound?’. I started diving into animal communication, mostly in birds as were the most acoustically active animals around me in London and in Europe. I will be always grateful to the Wildlife Sound Recording Society, of which I’m an officer now, to be so open in sharing and exchanging knowledge about animal communication.

There rest is history, now technology is just a tool for me to tell the stories of wildlife. I feel I did the opposite of what many people do, I didn’t have a creative trigger, hence why I went to study sound engineering, but this allowed me to find what inspired me to tell stories, wildlife. I feel grateful for this journey, as I now know what I want to tell, and I have a vast toolkit which doesn’t hold me back from expressing my feelings as I want, or almost.

What does your process look like for going out into the field and capturing the sounds of wildlife?

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I’ve been doing it for 7 years roughly now, and compared to the beginning, now I spend most of the time listening to what is going on around me. Early on I would go out and record anything I could, all the time, extremely curious about anything I would hear. Over time I learned that I had more uncatalogued recordings than anything else, when I go out, I look for sounds I like and trigger some curiosity. Recently I’ve been mostly curious about rhythmical grooves in bird songs, bird vocalisation dialects, so I tend to focus on these.

I usually have a reason to go out to record, a specific behaviour or sound I want to capture, and this is where the plan starts. Where is it happening? When, in which weather conditions? Is there human noise pollution? What is the animal exactly doing? What is the sound like? All these information are key to approach the recording in the right way, I have a range of microphones, recorders and equipment which I use depending on these situations.

For example, I wanted to record millions of birds doing a murmuration (flock of birds flying in unison, usually for escaping predators) on the tidal flats of the Banc d’Arguin in Mauritania. These birds do the most amazing murmuration and make such a low rumbling sound which I absolutely wanted to capture.

These birds come from as far as Eastern Siberia, isn’t it insane? How would it be to record the sound of them taking off.

After spending a couple of weeks looking at their behaviour (two weeks also because we had to wait for the filming permit from the government, which was painfully delayed, living my brother and I eating rice and canned fish for three weeks, and only enough water for drinking, so no shower for the length of our stay there) we understood their behavior.

The solution was to get a 360 microphone on a tripod, plugged into a recorded which could record for more than 16 hours non-stop, placing the microphone where the tracks of birds are on the tidal flat during low tide. At low tide the birds disperse all around feeding on molluscs and anything exposed in the mud, but when the tide comes back, there is where the fun begins. The birds start congregating in specific areas, and that’s where the microphone will be.

We can’t be there as the tide would reach around 40cm height. This meant I had to place the microphone on a tripod, with the recorder in a waterproof bag high enough so the legs of the mic get underwater, but not the recorder. I prepared three of these rigs, and we kept moving them every two low tides to try to capture them over the course of one week.

Everything went smooth, but I didn’t manage to get a good recording, until the last day of recording, where both the greatest and worst thing happen at the same time.

I went to retrieve one of the rigs, one of the most expensive ones (bare in mind I use professional equipment I would normally use on film sets), to find out the tide that night was much higher than normal, and submerged my recorder, which I found it floating in the so-called waterproof bag in salt water and battery acid. Luckily the SD card was intact, and I managed to get the best recording of the week. Thank you Zoom F6, I’ll be forever grateful for your work!

What are some of the unique challenges and considerations you have to keep in mind when recording in natural environments?

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It depends, I have been fighting for too long noise pollution from humans. It’s everywhere in the world, so difficult to escape, and I reached the point where I’m sort of cool with it. I realised the story and the animal behaviour is much more important than having a ‘pristine’ but story-less natural recording which could be used for a relaxation series. I’m looking for action, exciting, sad, fun, joyful, dramatic sounds of wildlife which make you ‘wow’!

Can you tell us about the "expeditions and immersive wildlife experiences" you create as part of @soundingwild?

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‘Wings Across Continents’ is the project I wanted to help me kickstart my artistic, wildlife-related career with a huge bang.

The initial goals were to spend as much time as possible in the wild, being able to record sounds of wildlife all the time. I had the vision of travelling, recording and sharing with whoever I would find on my way. Because we can all be good at exploring, but why would we? Who are the people who need to know the most about their local wildlife? The people living there, they are the protectors of the land, and they must know how crucially vital it is to take care of it.

I like to say this without saying it to people directly this way, but instead helping people notice their local wildlife, knowing some interesting facts about it which would spark curiosity. There is a big difference between being in contact and connected with nature: being in contact is about being in it, walking, cycling, whatever, but still in our thoughts, listening to music.

This is good until a certain point, it’s like a dopamine hit, it fades away as soon as you leave and then you crave more for it. Being connected is different, it’s about noticing wildlife, observing, having fun with it while respecting and learning from it, this is how we create emotional connetions with it, and this is how we protect it. I don’t need to tell you to protect birds if you like them in the first place, you’ll do it anyway.

With my brother Ario, photographer, graphic designer and filmmaker, we decided to take this mission to the next level, and this is where Wings Across Continents took shape. An Overlanding expedition following the bird migration between Europe and West Africa, with the vehicles fully kitted with all the living and professional equipment we need, which would let us stay in nature for as long as we need, to record, film and photograph the bird migratory birds at each place we go, and then create an immersive experience using an immersive 10.1 loudspeaker system and Virtual Reality headsets.

The experience quality would be the same in either Europe or Africa, at Universities or outside villages. I’ve been a professional travelling storyteller for a while and I want to make things right with the projects I do. Exploring for me is about learning and sharing with respect with whoever I cross path with.

Wings Across Continents started in February 2023 from Doñana, South of Spain, the first important migration hotspots for birds coming back from Africa into Europe. Until June 2023, we followed them up, stopped in Portugal, Catalonia, France, Germany to then reach the UK where we shared the first experience to the UK audience at the biggest nature-related fair in world, the Global Birdfair. Shout out to Tim and Penny Appleton to make this happen, and all the beautiful people involved!

After a few months of pre-production, in September 2023 we got into Morocco and started the African expedition, stopping in Morocco, Mauritania, Senegal, The Gambia, Guinea-Bissau and then finishing this phase in Sierra Leone in April 2024. Every month we stopped at a country, focusing our work on an important migration hotspot, which we would find in collaboration with the Migratory Birds for People initiative and Birdlife International partners.

They know which the most important places are to visit and work, and together with the local NGOs and experience we would capture the stories of local migratory birds. We would then find one or more locations where to do the immersive installation, either in the capital cities, in villages, visitor centres, camping sites, close to the street, universities, wherever we felt it was a good place to share it, trying to make it as inclusive as possible.

What countries do you want to visit in the future?

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In November/December 2024, if everything goes to plan, which may not, I’m starting the new expedition on the footsteps of Wings Across Continents, called Sounds Across Continents. I’ll follow five migratory bird species, visiting the places where they migrate, similarly to the previous project, but this time I’ll focus on their vocalisations, the animals they meet on their journeys, the stories people will tell me about those animals and the music they meet.

It will then end into a sound-only installation, with the multichannel loudspeaker system I have, but with people blindfolded in the middle, and the audio experience will combine all the elements I mentioned, plus composing music with together with locals using the samples we capture. The first phase will start in Sierra Leone, where my Hilux and equipment are currently stored, stopping in Ghana and Nigeria until March 2024. The following phase, 2025/2026, the plan is to stop in Cameroon, Gabon, DRC, Angola, Namibia to finally reach South Africa, the last location.

For those interested in learning more about the ‘specs’ behind recording sounds - Can you share any learning sources for someone who is interested in recording sound or special equipment you recommend?

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I think there is no need to overthink it, most of the work is in the fieldcraft and understanding the animals’ behaviours: the goal is to get as close as possible to the subject. Modern phones are good already to get some recordings, and they can be used as ‘Shazam for birds’ with the latest apps such as Merlin ID, which detects birds based on their calls.

If you would like to get some better recordings, I would advise to get a small recorder like a Zoom H1, a pair of small microphones like the Primo … and a large power bank. Put all these into a waterproof bag, and you have a great portable rig which you can use to record at home, on holidays or at any time. You can leave it in a place for 24 hours or more.

If you would like to know more, I’m an officer of the Wildlife Sound Recording Society, a 50+ years old association full of people with experience on how to do it, but also many new people who want to learn. There are good resources on the website, but becoming a member is even better to get involved and learn from others. We do run listening sessions also available online. If you have more questions, please feel free to get in touch, I’m happy to help on the right direction, online material can be overwhelming and sometimes not the right for your own purpose.

Where do you see the Sounding Wild project heading in the future?

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The mission is to tell stories in ways to make people aware of the sounds of wildlife close to them. Elephands and giraffes are amazing animals, but I don’t need to travel from Europe to Africa to be amazed by incredible wildlife encounters, it’s a matter of noticing wildlife close to us, and noticing it as much as possible. I see Sounding Wild as my platform where I can come up with any sort of idea and approach on how to do this, from portable installations in Africa to immersive permanent experiences in wellness centres in London and live-music performances at festivals.

What new directions or areas of exploration are you excited to pursue in the years to come?

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Music is a big one, I’m wrapping up my first EP, combining the music I make with birds, happy to call them bird beats, and make wildlife the protagonists of my music, not a background.

I’m working on lots of music where birds are the lead singers, and for this I needed a record label. Together with Salvador Garza Fishburn, friend and colleague in the Spatial Audio industry, back in 2021 we setup Sounding Wild Records, a record label which speaks about wildlife.

Any music that has wildlife sounds, or that has wildlife involved somehow, can be released.

The business model goal is to pay back the actual writers, wildlife also in this case together with the composers, so a percentage of the profit goes back to the nature reserve where the wildlife sounds have been recorded or the music got inspired from.

Every time you listen to a record from Sounding Wild Records on any streaming platform, you support the animals which are part of the composition by supporting the NGOs we directly collaborated with. We know this people, and we know the hard work they do in the field to protect these wonderful animals.

I would love to see this take off.

Words of Wisdom

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I’m obsessed with quotes, I would like to share one from the person whom I’ve got the name from, and I wasn’t aware he was also an animal conservationist until a few years ago.

“What you keep for yourself you loose, what you give away you keep forever.”

- Axel Munthe

For all the explorers out there, be humble, patient and appreciative of where you are and who you meet. You never know who you have in front of you, be respectful and humble at all times. Lastly, the most important thing I learnt as a sound recordist is to listen, listen to who you have in front before imposing yourself.

Thank you Axel, for taking the time out of your day to inspire others. At this stage, you are welcome to add any additional information you feel the audience should know about yourselves or share additional stories.

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If you feel you would be up for the expedition, I’m happy to create collaborations to bring wildlife sounds to everyone’s ears!

A Special Note from the Author

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A special thanks goes to my brother and colleague Ario, whom joined me on this tough, crazy life journey. It’s been hard, we can’t lie, living, working and travelling together for many years has put us on the spot many times. But I believe we created something which made both of us better people, and hopefully inspires more creatives in the future to listen and share.