hello,

this is the fourth field note for Forager, which comes out everywhere 10 days from today.

a few days ago i received my shipment of cassettes to sell at live shows and i’m really thrilled with how the printing came out. this style of case is made from cardstock rather than plastic, and folds neatly around the cassette with wraparound artwork. hard to describe without holding it in your hand, but the photos should help:

there’s still time to preorder a cassette (which should ship out this week for a little early-release treat). there’s something really special about physically holding music that you’ve worked on for months and months in your hand. even if you don’t have a cassette player, i have enjoyed collecting cassettes as their own kind of “art object”, a physical representation of the digital piece along with photos and notes that inspired its making.

while i’m throwing out links, i’ll also mention that the album release show for Forager is on july 24 at Big Lake Recording Co. pre-sale tickets are available here. this is a very small venue, so space will be limited.

ok, onto some field note material. in this issue i wanted to include some field recordings that will appear on other songs on the album. i’ve written a lot about field recording, so for issue #5 i plan to focus more on musical instruments and tape loops that were used to make the record.

the first field recording is one of my favorite: spring peeper frogs in Milton town forest. i setup my recorder near a pond where the sound was loudest, but you could really hear the chorus of frogs all throughout the hike.

the next one is gentler. it appears on a track titled “Something Strange”. it was taken it late spring of 2025, when the snow on the ground was starting to melt. it was warm enough to rain, so i took some microphones out to my greenhouse and recorded the sound of ice melting and rain hitting the snow.

finally, this last field recording actually did not make it onto the record, but it was taken when the concept for Forager was first born. i was on a trip in central Vermont, exploring nearby rivers and creeks. this sound, of rushing water and noisy texture, is very evocative to me of the album as a whole, even if most of the field recordings on Forager are not of water.

below is a picture i took while at the river, with the sun shining through the trees. it also inspired one of the titles of a track on the album “Halations”.

finally, i’’ll leave you with an unused synthesizer take. it’s a gentle progression of notes, almost like a lullaby. i let my modular synth run for a few minutes, and this was the result. for whatever reason, when i was curating and selecting the sounds for Forager this one didn’t make it into a finished piece. but i like the aimless, wandering nature of the melody still.

that’s it for now. trying to keep these dispatches short and informal. just my little note to you. will be back soon with field note #5.

-ben // st. silva