I have been fascinated by frogs since I can remember, either trying to catch them as a child or listening in awe to their haunting and mysterious songs. As a teenager I had terrariums at home with reptiles and frogs, many of them tropical. One of my first recordings was croaking toads, captured on a monophonic reel-to-reel tape recorder whilst I held the almost certainly scared toad in my palm, and in another recording making accompanying sounds with a rusted chain. Some years later I was listening to nocturnal choruses of frogs on the edge of a lake in Southern Czechie, blended with sounds from a camp-fire. Since then, during my wanderings across Europe, I have encountered incredible frog-song orchestras layered with varying sounds from different species and other insects. None of those orchestras were recorded – except in my mind – however the sounds have become imprinted as musical memories.

Many years after I traveled to the Amazon: the paradise of amphibians and insects. You can imagine my excitement. I was lucky enough to visit the Amazon several times in different locations, either on the black waters of Rio Negro or in the white waters of Mamori. Returning to the same place was very exciting and extremely interesting. During those years I collected many hours of recordings through different climatic conditions. I rarely saw the frogs I recorded due to the lush vegetation. After some while I didn’t even try to imagine how the frogs looked: all became this amazing dense and rather abstract soundscape. The variety of calls was astonishing: croaking, rubber-like, glass-like or tone ringing-like, barking, whistling bird-like, motor-like, clicking, ticking, trrrrr-like or squeaky-squidgy … and more, in every possible combination.

I found listening in a tropical rain-forest environment a challenge; the mosquitoes and intense heat, along with other discomforts, interfered with concentration and made sitting still difficult. Most of the time it is actually better to listen from recordings – though this is obviously a very different experience.

It took a lot of time to roughly edit all my recordings from Amazon. I listened to everything many times; first in the car pre-selecting from bigger portions, then at home while looking after my little boys (who were adding their own vocal contributions to the overall soundscape). I took notes, making morphological drawings, and only very slowly narrowed down the sequences. I was trying to imagine how I could share the experience on a smaller time-scale and yet keep the intensity of it. Selecting the best of the best sequences took a long time. I was searching for repeated patterns, sometimes overlapping cycles. I was looking for anomalies such as a frog suddenly „clearing his throat“ or trying to tune in to the global chorus, for similarities and differences simultaneously, regardless of chronological or any other order.

Finally I began to assemble fragments of various duration – each ranging between 30 sec and 10 min; there is in total 72 different fragments. I didn’t layer recordings and I didn’t use any processing or transformation. Everything is organized solely by the cut-up technique of editing. I attempted to create a sense of continuous – at moments dramatic – flow, sometimes interrupted by energetic differences between successive elements.

I am aware that each composition is long and we often do not have time to sit and listen for such lengths of time, so I recommend to split each track in two, creating six episodes. I recommend listening with good quality speakers or headphones.

Anouran Love Songs is an extensive composition based on sound-ecosystems centered around unidentified tailless amphibians (frogs and toads) and insects (a variety of grasshoppers, leafhoppers, cicadas, crickets, various flying insects); sometimes featuring other animals, such as bats, birds, fish jumping out of water and sounds of weather.