Peter Cusack is a field recordist and musician with a long interest in the acoustic environment. He initiated the “Favourite Sounds Project” to discover what people find positive about everyday soundscapes and ‘Sounds from Dangerous Places’ that uses sonic journalism to investigate places of major environmental damage like the Chernobyl exclusion zone or the Aral Sea, Central Asia and to track sonic impacts of the climate crisis. He plays improvised music on guitar and occasionally writes songs. In 2011/12 was a guest of the DAAD Künstlerprogramm in Berlin. More recently he has become involved with radio.aporee/radio.earth, remote audio streaming, soundwalking and making music on guitar that regards the sound environment as an equal participant.
He has also developed ways to play field recordings ‘live’ in performances with other musicians and as a soloist.

Duration: 30/40 min

Aral Sea Stories: jackal magic, ice bells, Dagira in thunder Sixty years ago the Aral Sea in Central Asia was the planet’s fourth largest lake. Today it has almost disappeared; a victim of vast Soviet irrigation schemes that divert too much water from its source rivers. It is one of the 20th century’s most significant, and least known, environmental disasters. However, since independence, Kazakhstan is successfully restoring a part of the Aral in its territory. Rising water levels and a reborn fishing industry are bringing obvious improvements to the local ecology and economy. It is a much needed positive example in the climate change debate and in re-thinking our relationship to the environment.

Since 2013 I have made several trips to the Aral and its watershed to make field recordings, take photographs, talk to people and to try to understand the impact of these major changes. My performance includes audio and images that tell stories from the Aral Sea and of the people who live there. They include jackal howling at night, the sounds of ice covered plants tinkling in the wind and a life affirming thunderstorm.