Track By Track: Kate Carr

Sydney’s KATE CARR regularly documents nature in her ambient work. Her night-friendly new album ‘Dark Days’ incorporates field recordings from her childhood home in Brisbane as well as from coastal New South Wales. Other instruments include mandolin, electric guitar, bass, keyboards and bells.

[Historical image is withheld pending rights review.]

‘Piano loops in some urban bushland’

I grew up near this slice of bushland in suburban Brisbane called Toohey Forest. It’s kind of scruffy and dry and noisy and this track is about hanging out there.

‘There are lakes and lakes of things to say’

For those situations in life where there are so many things to say and no words to say them with – just creaking, shuffling and a big shapeless expanse.

‘Estuarine’

I happened upon a creek in Sydney’s north one day just as the sea tide was coming upstream and mixing with the freshwater. It was kind of eerie to see the water flowing upwards instead of down and the ensuing eddies and flows it created.

‘Throb’

A big deep drone with a heartbeat.

‘Early evening’

I spend a fair bit of time down the south coast of NSW, and this piece stemmed from recordings taken just on nightfall when sounds splutter through the backyards around the shoreline of St Georges Basin.

‘The crows gather at the edge of the forest’

The happy result of discovering the evening resting place of a vast murder of crows and my brother getting a new dusty piano.

‘Insects by night’

Nightfall, the odd insect, the scrubby outline of the coast.

‘A brackish dusk’

A bit of everything swirling together: false starts and confusing outcomes.

‘Singing to plants’

Big swirling vines, huge leaves, hot tropical nights, exhaustion and some thoughts of singing.

‘Tomorrow afternoon’

Do I have the energy to do it all again?

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‘Dark Days’ is out now on CD and digitally through the non-profit UK label Vent. Kate Carr runs the Sydney label Flaming Pines, specialising in experimental ambient music.