ex-directory presents several new artists and audio-makers who are producing field recordings in order to tell stories, connect online communities and even distill entirely new, otherworldly sounds. Field Recordings is a podcast dedicated to (literally) “standing silently in fields”. There are over 240 episodes, including ASMR-like clatter of fisherman sorting clams on a Portuguese beach, chirping froglets in New South Wales, waves crashing on the frozen shores of Lake Ontario and a dog dreaming in the Wirral. Sounds of The Forest is an interactive "sound map" platform with one-minute recordings from local woodland from all over the world. MycoLyco's producer connects synthesisers to giant oyster mushrooms and quartz crystals, then records their output, with sounds ranging from the gentle ambient bubbling of an amethyst playing a Eurorack to the erratic chatter of oyster mushrooms performing on a modular synth

Revolutionary American composer Alvin Lucier will get a very special 90th birthday present that will be performed by 90 artists and is about to last for 26 hours. Artists will stage their performances of Lucier’s paradigmatic 1969 work 'I Am Sitting In a Room', an experimental work Lucier made to explore his own voice, consisting of echo and dissonance of his reading voice. Beginning on his birthday eve, Thursday, May 13th, 8pm EST (2am, Friday, May 14th Berlin time, 9am, Friday, May 14th Tokyo time) and continuing throughout all of Friday, May 14th, Lucier's birthday. The marathon on Thursday and Friday will feature members of his family, students and colleagues performing in various spaces, some of which have been part of the composer’s life. New York Times looks back into the artist's career.

Lego released a streaming-only album 'White Noise' which was made by the Lego pieces being poured out of tubs, sifted through and clicked together. Lego’s “head of creative” Primus Manokaran describes the streaming-only album as “a collection of soundscapes” designed to promote relaxation and mindfulness. Manokaran told Guardian that producing the album was “like composing with 10,000 tiny instruments”.

"Taking from ambient, soundtrack, harsh noise, jazz, and a host of other types of music, 夢遊病者 simply does not care about fitting into one specific mold" as they "craft something indistinguishable from anything else" - Brooklyn Vegan writes in awe of this extraordinary debut album by the anonymous international avant-garde metal trio. The band as an entity is also quite fluid - their early Bandcamp releases credit them as a Russian/ Japanese/American entity, they use Chinese characters for their name (Sleepwalker in English), the title of the album 'Noč Na Krayu Sveta' is in Slovenian, while the band members are named as PBV, NN, and KJM.

Six Degrees Records is releasing today 'I’ve Forgotten Now Who I Used to Be', an album of field recordings from Ghana "witch" camps - in reality, refugee camps for women accused of witchcraft. It was produced by Grammy-winning producer Ian Brennan (Tinariwen, Zomba Prison Project).

Experimental Indonesian metal Senyawa are releasing their new album ‘Alkisah’ on 44 different independent labels around the world (release dates vary from Feb 19 to Feb 21). Labels span from the experimental duo’s hometown of Yogyakarta, Indonesia, to the United States, United Kingdom, EU and other Asian countries, the New York Times reports. Senyawa confirmed the album release will vary by label, each with their own “different design and packaging, with multiple remix/reinterpretations by various artists”. Senyawa said that the concept of releasing through multiple labels would decentralise the “former hierarchical system of music distribution” and would allow shipping distances and cost to be reduced, and empower “smaller scattered powers to grow and connect”.

LA-based collector Jonathan Ward released a new 100-track compilation, 'An Alternate History of the World’s Music', focused on music recorded across the non-Anglo world, and beyond popular music, between 1907-1967. There's Crimean Tartar Orchestra, as well as music from the Persian Gulf, the Okinawa islands, Afghanistan, Sudan, the former Yugoslavia, Uganda, Spain, Albania, Mongolia, Mexico, etc. Ward is a collector of old 78rpm records who started his website Excavated Shellac in 2007, posting up a recording every day, which means this is just a glimpse into his collection. Guardian's Garth Cartwright calls it "the best album of 2021" (it actually came out in December). Bandcamp sells digital copies for $35.

BBC aired a lovely Christmas story about northern lights turned into music. The two people behind it are biologist Karin Lehmkuhl Bodony who lives in Alaska, and Alaskan composer Matthew Burtner, who works with natural sounds and scientific environmental data to make a piece of music derived from the sounds of the aurora.

British bird-enthusiast and producer Cosmo Sheldrake recorded his latest album 'Wake Up Call' with pieces composed entirely from recordings of endangered British birds. Created over a nine year period, the aim of the album is to make people conscious of bird sounds and the loss of wildlife from our lives. Guardian talked to the lovely eccentric: “Once you can identify them as species or individuals, it just turns into this completely insane conversation across huge amounts of time and space. You have these themes essentially rippling through the woods. Everything that happens in a woodland is like a stone dropping into a pond. It sends out these ripples as those birds respond and then respond to those responses … there are so many layers and levels to it".

UK collective UKAEA is made of "superheroes" of UK experimental and alternative music, who are deeply influenced by immigration and sounding global. UKAEA have just released their debut album 'Energy is Forever', coming deeply from techno and industrial background, with Middle Eastern and African influences also prominent on the record. “I think ultimately the goal is to make music that sounds like it's from nowhere” - collective's leader Dan Jones told the Quietus. (Not overly) unusual music with a substance.