It’s 6.30am and Els and I have cycled up the holy grail (aka the 5th path) of the swamp score to record the waking life of the marsh and river. Sun shining, birds and us a-grinning in reeds and on high. But hark and hell. There’s a loud long drone of noise that grows as we get further from the city. It’s the highway. We’ve been out here a lot and never heard this. Is it just gentle wind direction and dry air ?

Back at the Lederbirds HQ for balalaika workshop then story telling, puppet making and animation over cooking for dinner to share. Directed by the wonderful Mattias Laga it’s more than inspiring. People are really getting on with things together here. We are flemish, english, slovakian, somalian, turkish, french, dutch and congolese.  I’m hear to gather material for the sonic garden that the swamp bicycles will later reveal and everyone notes the 1st public tests. June 9th and 11th 2012.

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Departing wet London to timelab for next stage of “The swamp that was – a bicycle opera from the ground of Ganda.”  There’s a technical delay so won’t be the cycling around GPS-ing off different sound files all over the city as anticipated. Disappointing but means more time for compositional space which could be a good thing.

The 3D installation ‘You might come out of the water every time singing’ for the Galapagos exhibition finally opens at the Bluecoat, last night. The good news is that the sympathetically vibrating shark platform more than works.  Open free and daily 10am – 6pm to Sunday July 1st 2012.  And every time you visit, the combination of sharks performing could be different.

Yes my ear has been bent by a medium sized hammerhead slipping into the Tyne and chasing wild salmon up river. Easter Eggs away, the fish shall play.  Joy Sunday audience at the Electron Festival, Geneva, we could be in for some fun !

Ambisonic discussions with Dr Adam and Dave Hunt fly over AudRey’s good coffee. Shark progression is swift and clean cut. Between pauses we write Max patches, build speaker cradles for hanging them and send oscillator outputs twisting and pitching through space driven by hammerhead shark’s hunting paths out in the Pacific.

Eight channels are finally  lashed up in AudRey to complete You might come out of the water every time singing.  Dr Adam also in the house and we make good progress, 6 sharks swooping, swarming and circling around us. Question, how do we make them pause without drowning ?

The Lappetites prepare to perform new work OCEAN for He[A]R. A 4 channel piece that travels the streams to rivers and seas of Finland, Japan and England. With Akama adding nagauta vocal techniques & shamisen, AGF drawing and processing images live and Matthews live sampling and mixing, it could be wet. Matthews also to  play solo of sonification experiments to date from Yird Muin Starn project.

The Lappetites land in Vancouver to play the He[A]ar concert series, Vancouver New Music Society, at the Waldorf Hotel, Thursday 21st March. Big Canadian skies, some of the finest Japanse food and playing as a trio again is wonderful. We are prepping a new audio-visual piece, OCEAN,  which will feature under and over water recordings, processed vocals, shamisen, noise, jumped, shaped and dragged through  multi-channels, following a score of planet Earth’s water cycle.

Landing Karlsruhe to install Sonic Bed_Scotland at ZKM for SOUNDART show opening Friday 16th March,  open to public 17th March to January 6th 2013.