Lanka by The Hum and The Sky

These tracks came about in my studio a few years after visiting the island of Sri Lanka for the purposes of a filming project called “Rediscovering the Country”. It was a film all about regenerative agriculture in both south eastern Australia and Sri Lanka. I took the opportunity to take some field recordings whilst there and many of the atmospheres collected became the spark of an idea that underpin many of the compositions.

“A journey through reimagined landscapes and memory” is my idea of creating a cohesive series of musical pieces that honour my memory of visiting a particular place, time and culture. Lanka is my first album that endeavours to do that, a body of work that puts a frame around my experience and recontextualizes it.

These recordings reimagine the adventure in an impressionistic musical form, with an ambitious and honest naivety driving each offering. Perhaps these pieces are a contemporary version of musical ‘exotica’, a westernised lens on the east, made possible by readily available virtual instruments and a laptop studio.

Nonetheless, the soul of these works draw upon the authenticity of my experiences in Sri Lanka and my love for creating sound worlds.

Stephen Oakes August 2020

The Hum and The Sky is the studio based sound project of Australian Stephen Oakes. He aims to journey through "re-imagined landscapes and memory" in musical sound worlds. An enthusiastic electronic musician and field recordist since his teens, Stephen is excited to present his first release on Bandcamp