Are you interested in the eagles or on the insect vibe at the

moment? Oh, no, yeah.

No, I love them.

I love them, yeah.

I keep getting flashes on my playlist here and there's one title that keeps hitting me.

It says aggressive fart.

I'll play it for you later.

Do you know what I mean? Like, do you think a Victorian cunt is going to have that with his cigar? No, I'm

Toby's there as well so the whole gang are there that's great fantastic okay well Sean for anyone who hasn't been on the journey with you what were you at for the last five years can you give us a bit of a recap in maybe two or three minutes

So, yeah, I moved back to Ireland in 2021, having lived in Barcelona for a few years.

I came back.

I needed a project.

I began to sound record birds, something that I've been listening to since I was in the pram.

And I decided I wanted to sound record every single bird.

bird species in ireland and so that kind of started things off i did an interview with the irish times and i kept running away from the camera being distracted by birds and they included in the the video and i guess that people thought it was funny and maybe a little bit interesting then we made a documentary about it uh wrote a book uh released two albums did an Irish theatre show.

How do you actually do it? Are you up a tree with a kind of big boom mic or what way does it work?

Was it Man Khan McGahan who originally kind of nudged you to go off on tour, yeah?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Um, you know, I didn't know Man Khan as well as other people did.

Um, uh, I, I often mention him, and it's because that he just had such a profound impact on, on me and what I do today.

Uh, I think so many people, you know, in this industry, the, the industry of, of creative output, what- whatever you want to call it, have, have been touched by Man Khan in this way, and he was just so generous.

And, and fir- at first, actually, I was intimidated by Man Khan because, um, you know, I felt like I didn't belong in this world.

I felt like everything happened by accident and that I was gonna be found out as somebody that isn't really meant to be a writer, isn't really meant to be on a stage.

I think you feel that deeply, yeah.

too harsh?

100%.

Yeah, definitely.

Look, I think as a species, humans...

We're very proud, aren't we? And we don't like to be told what to do.

I always deliver these messages in a way that's not finger pointing, in an apologetic way.

And I want people to see, I want people to see why these actions are having a negative impact and make them understand that, rather than say, why are you doing this, you bad person? I like to say, doing this has this impact and we really shouldn't do it.

But something that got me harder than anything I've ever read was when you were trying to find a bird, an Irish bird called a ring oozle up in Donegal and you found something that was quite heartbreaking.

It's a rock that a song thrush has been using as an anvil to open snail shells.

It's a cracked snail around it.

It's not a whole lot.

Sometimes you see them and there's little fragments of... brown-lipped snail everywhere.

I actually sound recorded a soundtrush cracking a snail off a rock finally after five years of trying to capture it.

I didn't find it, it found me, you know.

So it found one of my microphones that was lying in ambush under the grass and just so happened to start cracking its snails next to the rock which was touching my microphone.

How does it make you feel that little sanctuaries like this increasingly just a few scraps left behind in the landscape and that there isn't more wilderness?

Yeah

... you want to see it, and you want to see it again, and, uh, like, I found myself even refreshing my phone, like, which is not good.

But, and then she was also, like, helping me withnegative comments because you could get a thousand good comments and one negative comment from someone or even a comment that you perceive to be negative and was kind of worded strangely can just destroy your day like but she was uh you know they were they were great in that sense like and they kind of set everything up to to safeguard me from the worst of that like and that was that was amazing like but like even when bird song went out like it was such a niche thing but i think there was more of do you know what actually it was a beautiful documentary though it was very very well made and it was rte in fairness put out a lot of shit and but like they do like like promo you mean this was really good yeah yeah no oh yeah i know what you mean yeah like no no this was like i saw it and i went i can't believe this is on rte1 yeah it was so slow and lovely and was like this doesn't belong in this format yeah yeah no it's a compliment it was really annoying i like i you can compliment because i didn't make it like you know i was just i was just there talking about birds the compliment goes to cat the compliment goes to kathleen and and and ross and everybody like you know uh who are who are amazing uh geez what was i gonna say i had at least three different unrelated things to say to you and they've all gone do you know what i'm after realizing that my so the clock is not only an hour behind it's an hour and 10 minutes behind so according to this clock you should have had an interval 10 minutes ago so can i can i just say one thing when we come back i i actually have some very specific things that i'm very excited to tell you so i'm gonna we should we should try and stop rambling maybe a little bit i can't wait to tell you this man seriously i always go on tell me one thing i can't because once i start i'm fucking smoking a fag at the interval now because of this will we do a mystery song before we go yes we'll do a mystery song go on this is mad all together jesus what did i what did i call this again oh jesus look at this look are you ready for this what is this i heard this in the middle of the night and i thought that i was going to have to call the guards what is that is that a fucking fox with a cough it's not a fox oh no i think you might be onto something there is it is it it's it's not a man it's not a mammal i thought i thought it was actually a woman in trouble screaming in in this quarry that i was walking in and i i had to look around and say what the what is this it's a fucking swan no and i'm after recording it several times and did you see that mad book i have there it's like yeah yeah it's obscure it's the most amazing book it was made in the 80s it's still the most concise is that normal swan noises no that's that's romantic swan sound so that's swan right wow that's what let me do it one more that swan is is actually displaying right let's go again oh yeah it's that's look look at this but that's what it's doing isn't it is it a male or a female swan it's the male it's the male displaying yeah um it did a lot of other weird things as well i've got loads what does a swan display look like is it is it cormoranty is it is it it was dark like i didn't i didn't actually see it i just found out through uh you know reading that book and and and putting it together so swans display sexually in the dark it seems like it yeah a lot of things happen in the dark that i didn't realize um seriously like come here do you want to hear a flock of flamingos flying over a woodland when an owl is calling in the middle of the night go on go on the eye neck are trying to sell a few pints here i hope i haven't lost it now after i sold it oh come here listen to this right this is a flock of flamingos flying over the catalan pre-pyrenees the foothills of the pyrenean mount pyrenees mountains in the in in catalunya in the middle of the night as a tawny owl coal god what's happening to my words a tawny owl calls right here so they're migrating right here they come there's the owl here come the wing beats there they go like a high-speed train wow flamingos migrating over a mountain forest in catalunya in the middle of the night with an owl calling um myself and sean will be back out in about 10 or 15 minutes you go and have a wonderful pint and a piss all right douglas all right let's have our little little ocarina pause now i could oh i like talking over that babble there that's nice sounded it felt like being at a golf tournament there we'll have a little break here for some advertising and i i do have an ocarina present and i could play it for the ocarina pause but i don't want to instead so i mentioned at the start of the podcast i'm really looking forward to growing some potatoes this weekend and i i've kind of been thinking about nothing but potatoes i got this massive book it's called the history and social influence of the potato it's about 2 000 pages long it's fucking huge this is the bible of potatoes very heavy book and i'm gonna hit myself into the head with this book and you're gonna hear some adverts for some bullshit okay so

Mm-hmm.

Uh, they can come from as far as Siberia even.

Um, and I have a friend, Alan Dalton.

Uh, if you're interested, if anyone is listening, look up Alan Dalton, by the way.

He's a manic sound recordist like me, uh, but he's in Sweden.