1. Low Pressure
2. Embleton Rookery
3. The Crossroads
4. River Mara At Dawn
5. River Mara At Night
6. A Passing View
7. Bosque Seco
8. Sunsets
9. The Blue Men Of The Minch
10. High Pressure
11. Gahlitzerstrom
12. The Forest Path
Reviews
NoiseGate (UK):
"Watson's lead instrument is the tape recorder. After working with Cabaret Voltaire and The Hafler Trio, he became sound recordist for The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, he has since joined a film and video production company, working for BBC wildlife documentaries. The 13 recordings on Stepping into the Dark contrast a windswept forest in Glen Cannich with the gathering conversations of rooks roosting in a churchyard in Northumberland. Other atmospheres include the heat and wall of sound found on the river Mara in Kenya, fishing bats on a mangrove pool in Venezuela, the ritual dance of snipe at dusk in the North Hebrides, a hydrophone at 5m depth in the Moray Firth captures the signature whistles and clicks of bottlenose dolphins. Very good."
CMJ (USA):
"Chris Watson made these extraordinary recordings by concealing microphones (so they wouldn/t be noticed by local fauna) in various outdoor locations around the world, from Scotland to Venezuela to Germany, then rolling the tape and capturing the sound of the particular place and time. That's 'sound' not 'ambiance' - rather than being "soothing sounds of the surf"-type stuff, they're dense with noises (swarms of flies, croaking birds, bowl-you-over winds). You have to listen to them actively. As an aid to that, they average about four minutes apiece, or roughly the length of a pop song. In fact, listening to them a few times, you start to hear each track that way: as a collection of textures (incessantly croaking frogs) and "riffs" (an evening chorus of snipe), of unique events (the deep hum of insects buzzing by the microphone) and thematic development (the slow, symphonic crescendo of a Costa Rican forest as it awakens at daybreak). The highlight is a pair of recordings of the Maasai Mara river in Kenya: one slow and fluttery at 6:15 am, one hot and thick with noise at 9:30 pm, when Watson feared a hippo attack." [Douglas Wolk]
Wired (UK):
"Taking ambient to its logical conclusion is Chris Watson, whose Stepping into the Dark (Touch) is a collection of recordings of places. Hear birdsong, cicadas, sea and wind. Absolutely no fill-in synth washes or new-age cheesery whatsoever. Music with the music taken out - radical!"
The Wire [UK]:
"Chris Watson's Stepping into the Dark makes a collection of environmental recordings positively eventful by comparison (ed.: to Dark Continent). This is a kind of National Geographic supersession: the siskins and song thrushes of the Kielder Forest trade licks with the fishing boats of Venezuela, while the dolphins of the Moray Firth seem like they're auditioning for back-up roles on the next Björk album. It's easy to scoff like this, but the purple prosody of the liner notes does give rise to the feeling that Mother Nature is just another musical virtuoso, all ready to tune up and howl "Let's rock" for the likes of Watson and those who buy his records (and there must be buyers). But fair's fair: Watson's recordings of the River Mara in Kenya by night are of a sonic intensity that beggar's belief, and his tape of the change in environment with the sunrise in a Costa Rican rainforest is little short of poetic. Of its kind, then, this is a decent (if a tad overlong) disc, comparable with Alan Lamb's telegraph-wire recordings on Dorobo. But next time, Chris - give those rhesus monkeys some solo space in the mix." [Paul Stump]
On (UK):
"Armed with a tape recorder and a history that includes a stint as sound recordist for the Royal Society for Protection of Birds, Watson delivers eleven scapes from around the world - from Kielderside to Kenya - in a triumph of recording techniques that veers sharply away from any kind of new age relaxation agenda. The rooks roosting in the churchyard at Embleton, Northumberland are as in-yer-face as any hardstep and the heat and wall of sound in Kenya is startling in its own way too. If you're too busy to escape Islington or canna afford to quit Balham, book a sonic away-day with Chris Watson. Vibin!" [Wild Weazel]
Magic Feet (UK):
"As Jello Biafra of the Dead Kennedys once said, "Relax, everything is done for you." How seriously you take all this Virtual Reality Cyber Culture stuff is largely down to how much you've allowed yourself to be duped by it. Meshing neatly with the Western preference for stored over immediate experience, Chris Watson has delivered an album of field recordings from Europe, Africa and South America. So you get a cacophony of rooks from a remote Northumberland graveyard, dolphins communicating under the Moray Firth and the rising hum of a Costa Rican jungle at dawn. Sure enough, there are patterns and cyclical loops to be followed just like any music. It's all very tastefully done, from the packaging to the genuinely enthusiastic sleeve notes emphasising that this is a truly candid aural view of nature which manages to "avoid background noise, human disturbance and editing". But surely the whole point about nature is that it just is, and is there for the dwindling numbers of humans not tied to a VDU screen to just go out and drink in first hand. Maybe its a touch paranoid, but its not too difficult to imagine families of the future sat around sound machines in air-conditioned rooms using recordings such as this to learn about nature. Maybe Chris Watson could enjoy no greater punch line for his work than such a scenario. Or maybe we should all literally get out more." [Andy McCall-Smith]
ECLECTRICITY (UK):
"A BBC sound recordist and previously a collaborator with Andrew M. McKenzie in the Hafler Trio, Watson has assembled some favourite fragments of international environment recordings on this CD. Not only do they convey a sense of place, hinting at the physicality of different terrain, but contain emotional echoes of shared experiences. The electrical hum of insects, bird calls awakening the forest of Bosque Seco in Costa Rico, reminded me of dragonflies low over the water of a quiet lake one Scandinavian summer, an experience I'd long forgotten. Seasonal dates and times are included with beautiful photographs in a booklet, together with precise latitude and longitude measurements for those eager to take the adventure themselves." [DKH]
EST (UK):
"After leaving Cabaret Voltaire and the Hafler Trio, Chris Watson found work as a sound-recordist, working for example for the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. I'm pleased to see that his belated return to the "music" industry isn't with a music album, but with a collection of location recordings, covering the wilds of Britain (Cumbria, Scotland, Northumberland) and overseas (Germany, Venezuela, Costa Rica, Kenya). Watson suggests that these recordings are not simply documentary, but concerned with capturing the intangible spirit of each location. Clear recording and a total absence of human sounds invite meditation, but it's also interesting to try and divine any musical qualities in the birdsong or dolphin clicks that occur. There's an integrity to Watson's straightforward approach that just about sets Stepping into the Dark apart from "Forest Moods" type location- sound recordings, and which ensures I'll be listening to it again." [BD]
Alternative Press (US):
"French conceptual artist Marcel Duchamp once predicted that the artist of the future would point at what already exists and it would become art. Many sound artists have taken a philosophically similar outlook, using found sound, plagiarism and media manipulation. Former Hafler Trio and Cabaret Voltaire collaborator Chris Watson takes a different approach to this aesthetic, preferring to let the world around us do its own talking.
Stepping is an engaging collection of field recordings made at exotic locales while Watson was doing location sound for various documentaries. He presents a rich variety of environments ranging from flies near the Mara River in Kenya, to nesting rooks in an old churchyard, to fishing bats in Venezuela.
Animals and the elements take center stage throughout the disc. It seems strange to have any human's name on the sleeve at all. Watson has wisely chosen to leave these sounds raw and realistic, making this about as close as most of us will get to a world tour. Use your ears and drift." [Joseph Cross]
