We are incredibly excited to share a very special international collaboration landing in the fields this year. We’ve joined forces with Uzbekistan’s groundbreaking Stihia Festival and EarthSonic (In Place of War’s flagship climate programme) to bring you ‘Two Seas’ – an ambitious project using electronic music to tell the stories of two of the world’s most dramatic environmental transformations.
With the support of the British Council, this project brings together artists from the UK, Uzbekistan and Finland to create original music using real-world field recordings captured from two climate-threatened landscapes: the melting ice of Finland’s Bothnian Bay and the dried seabed of Uzbekistan’s Aral Sea.
The Journey of the Soundscapes
At the absolute heart of this project is the acclaimed UK electronic duo Paranoid London. They journeyed to both Finland and Uzbekistan to record the changing soundscapes of these fragile environments, collaborating with local artists and communities along the way.
- Chapter One: The Bothnian Bay (Oulu, Finland) The journey began on the frozen coastline of Oulu during the Frozen People Festival. Here, the duo collaborated with Finnish and Indigenous Sámi artists to record the shifting sounds of the Bothnian Bay as rising temperatures continue to reshape and rewrite one of Europe’s northernmost seas, which is gradually losing its frozen identity.
- Chapter Two: The Aral Sea (Muynak, Uzbekistan) The second chapter took their team and ours to Muynak – once a thriving fishing port and now home to the haunting “cemetery of ships” left behind by the retreating Aral Sea. Paranoid London worked alongside local Uzbek artists to capture the sound of the wind sweeping across the exposed seabed and the hollow resonance of abandoned vessels.
Experience ‘Two Seas’ Live at Shambala
This epic project will culminate in a headline live set from Paranoid London at our very own Data Mine venue at 01:00 (Friday night/Saturday morning. Expect hard-hitting electronic rhythms seamlessly blended with natural field recordings and mind-bending immersive visuals, crafted by none other than Matt Black (Coldcut/Ninja Tune) and Ben Sheppee (The Observatory).
We’ll also be welcoming Uzbek artist, WILYAM, to our fields to kick off the weekend with a set at Rebel Soul on Thursday at 21:00 – 22:15 – bringing Central Asian soundscapes straight to our activist hub.
Following its Shambala premiere, the music will be released via EarthSonic’s record label, accompanied by a documentary capturing the entire journey. Lots more on that here!
Big love,
Sham HQ xx