Field Works

Interdisciplinary artist Stuart Hyatt directs the collaborative initiative Field Works, which fashions musical works from field recordings of natural events and ambient environments tied to specific moments and sites. Dozens of experimental, electronic, and indie musicians have joined the effort, among them Mary Lattimore, Dan Deacon, Juana Molina, Matmos, and Eluvium. In addition to books, installations, and site-specific performances, the project has issued albums including the 2021 release Cedars, a song cycle centered on the planet’s forests that fused Arabic poetry with cosmic Americana. Human voices sang in tandem with terrestrial sound captures on 2022’s Stations.

Stuart Hyatt resides in Indianapolis. His initial recognition arrived with the 2005 album The Clouds, a collection of gospel songs he wrote that local choirs and amateur singers in Sumter County, Alabama, performed. The package featured handmade corrugated cardboard, and the recording earned a nomination for Best Recording Package at the 2005 Grammy Awards. Hyatt composed his 2007 album Shrimp Attack alongside participants from Creative Clay, a nonprofit cultural arts center serving artists with developmental disabilities in St. Petersburg, Florida. As with The Clouds, this edition presented inventive packaging that placed the CD inside a U.S. Army canteen pouch together with ninja tree seeds and a spiral-bound illustrated notebook. Both albums first appeared on Hyatt’s Team Records imprint before Innova Recordings reissued them.

Hyatt belongs to M12, a Colorado-based artist collective and nonprofit that produces artwork, research projects, and educational programs focused on rural cultures and landscapes. Since the early 2010s he has taken part in multiple M12 exhibitions, summits, and creative works. The first Field Works album, The National Road, came out in 2014. Drawing on field recordings Hyatt made along one street in Indianapolis and employing Italo Calvino’s Invisible Cities as narrative structure, the set featured musicians such as Lali Puna, B. Fleischmann, and Nick Zammuto. Hyatt sustained international collaborations for subsequent Field Works recordings and performances. Pogue’s Run followed in 2015, built from captures of an Indianapolis waterway and involving William Tyler, Rafael Anton Irisarri, and Benoît Pioulard. Created alongside the Lancaster Sound Map exhibition, Born in the Ear appeared in 2016 and incorporated voices of citizens and choirs from Lancaster, Pennsylvania, plus musicians including Juana Molina, the Album Leaf, Eluvium, and Loscil.

Also released in 2016, The Fair State contemplated Indiana’s bicentennial through recordings gathered at the Indiana State Fair. Hyatt and Julien Marchal composed the album, which included harpist Mary Lattimore. Inspired by the geology of south central Texas, 2018’s Glen Rose Formation derived its music from resonant frequencies recorded inside the Cave Without a Name. Narration by 89-year-old Mary McGrath Curry appeared alongside remixes by electronic artists such as Dntel, Lusine, and Matmos. Later that year the two-part Initial Sounds arrived, encompassing sounds from glaciers and volcanoes inside the earth as well as gravitational waves from outer space, with collaborators Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith, Dan Deacon, the Field, and Pantha du Prince.

Temporary Residence issued Metaphonics: The Complete Field Works Recordings in September 2018, a seven-LP box set accompanied by a hardbound book; the label simultaneously made all the albums available digitally. The eighth Field Works album, Ultrasonic, emerged in 2020. Constructed from bat recordings, it featured music by Noveller, Kelly Moran, Jefre Cantu-Ledesma, Chihei Hatakeyama, and additional artists. Cedars, containing narration by Youmna Saba and H.C. McEntire together with musicians including Marisa Anderson, Fadi Tabbal, and Nathan Bowles, appeared in 2021, followed by Maple, Ash, and Oaks: Cedars Instrumentals. In 2022 Field Works released Stations, an album connected to the EarthScope project that employed ground recording devices to capture natural planetary sounds later combined with vocals and instrumentation by Laraaji, Masayoshi Fujita, Qasim Naqvi, and others.