ANTARCTICA EXPERIENCED THROUGH MUSIC

Capsule Comments on CDs about Antarctica

© Valmar Kurol (2009)

NOTE: This valuable resource is kindly provided by Valmar Kurol (Montreal Antarctic Society/Societe Antarctique de Montreal).

Valmar Kurol can be reached directly at mtl.ant.soc@sympatico.ca

Launched: 27 May 2004. Last Updated: 19 February 2006; 9 December 2006; 7 July 2007; 15 July 2007; 5 January 2008; 3 August 2008; 15 February 2009.

There is no other music like the toneless music of millions of years of accumulated silence, through which come bars of unearthly colours. There is no need for ears to hear the fugues played on this ice organ. Here nature has set aside for man a domain of beauty and inspiration such as he cannot know elsewhere on this planet - Rear Admiral Richard E. Byrd (The National Geographic Magazine, Oct. 1947).

In his 1986 treatise, The Ice - A Journey to Antarctica, American author and history professor Stephen Pyne argues that “traditional fiction could not find enough material in the Antarctic experience or the Antarctic environment to construct typical novels. The range of potential experiences was much smaller than elsewhere, the opportunity for surprise much less. Modernist literature was more inclined to follow Joseph Conrad into the Heart of Darkness than to pursue Robert Scott into the Antarctic’s Heart of Whiteness. Instead the Antarctic has been largely a wasteland for imaginative literature.”

If one substitutes music for fiction/literature, the above comments may be just as appropriate. The visual and spiritual superlatives of Antarctica are now frequently expressed through photographs, movies and coffee table books but to a lesser extent through music. What kinds of tunes and rhythms does the seventh continent inspire? Is there an Antarctic sound? Whatever the answers to these questions, it seems that there is a scarcity of Antarctic-themed music for those with an appetite for it. The classical repertoire appears to be minimal and it is the pop artists who have been making more Antarctic musical noises, in some cases literally. While earlier songs may have focused on urging listeners to keep the continent pristine, much of the current crop seems to hold Antarctica as a mirror/metaphor for the coldness and isolation people feel in their day to day lives.

The following is a consumer’s guide to recorded music that I have found over the past fifteen years, now mainly through the Internet. There are very few themed discs devoted entirely to Antarctica, but there are now many CDs with individual songs entitled Antarctica or about The Ice. While this site is meant to be a listing and not a critical or sociological discussion of the music, there are occasional commentaries, which stand to be corrected or debated, as well as comments by some artists about their tracks. A few non-music CDs have been included for their Antarctic content (theatre, recitation, comedy routines) but CD audio books have been excluded, with one exception where the material was considered to be noteworthy.

The amount of music being made about Antarctica seems to be increasing in recent years due to:

1) the relative ease of visiting Antarctica, through tourist cruises, for direct inspiration;

2) the establishment of Artists and Writers programs by governments of countries with bases in Antarctica, which provide financial, logistical and promotional support;

3) the increasing focus on the continent (particularly now because of the widescale interest in global warming);

4) the ease of composing and recording music with consumer oriented software and digital instruments and 5) the increased possibilities of finding a worldwide audience and marketplace through the Internet with personal web sites or download/distribution sites with digital files, without the need of CDs.

Of course, none of this guarantees that interesting, popular or quality music will be made. To return to the questions at the beginning of this introduction, (What kinds of tunes and rhythms does the seventh continent inspire? Is there an Antarctic sound?), based on this discography, the answer is, it’s everything and anything people bring from their own varied backgrounds. The music listed herein includes the beautiful, inspirational, comical, harsh and discordant to the outright boring.

Finally, many thanks to all the composers and performers who have taken the time to provide comments about the reasons and inspirations for their Antarctic-themed music. This has greatly helped to animate the discography. Any additions to the music listing are welcome. – Valmar Kurol, Montreal, Quebec, Canada (mtl.ant.soc@sympatico.ca)

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Classical Antarctica: Ralph Vaughan Williams

SINFONIA ANTARTICA (Seventh Symphony) by Ralph Vaughan Williams.

Perhaps you have seen the vintage 1949 film Scott of the Antarctic. The background music, by one of Britain’s greatest 20^th century composers, was later arranged into his Seventh Symphony, which premiered in 1953 and is still considered to be the mother of all recorded Antarctic music. The scoring includes a wind machine and conveys the struggle and desolation of Robert Scott’s final journey. It is a dark, deep, dreary and depressing work, not to be played on a Walkman or iPod on an exercise bike. There are many recorded versions and listeners may find their individual tastes and preferences among the various issues.

The Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra’s recording of this work in 1998 with conductor Kees Bakels, on the budget-priced NAXOS label, is a real bargain at a third of the price of some of the more expensive ones. The booklet notes are informative but why, oh, why feature a cover photo of Greenlanders hunting in the ice, when this is supposed to be the South? Naxos 8.550737

The second release in 1998 of this classic Antarctic music, performed by the Hallé Orchestra, conducted by Sir John Barbirolli, is no spring penguin. The full symphony was premièred in January 1953 by Barbirolli and the present performance was recorded in June 1953. This reissue on CD is now the oldest of the eleven performances of the Symphony currently available on disc.

The issued performances are:

1. Sir John Barbirolli, Hallé Orchestra (Manchester), recorded June 1953; 1998 EMI 7243 5 665434 2 7

2. Kees Bakels, Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, recorded September 1996; 1998 NAXOS 8.550737

3. Andrew Davis, BBC Symphony Orchestra, recorded March 1996; 1997 TELDEC 0630-13139-2

4. André Previn, London Symphony Orchestra, recorded 1968; 1995 BMG/RCA 74321 29248; also issued as 1985 BMG 60590-2-RG

5. Raymond Leppard, Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, recorded March 1992; 1993 KOSS Classics KC - 2214

6. Leonard Slatkin, Philharmonia Orchestra, recorded June & November 1991, November 1992; 1993 BMG 09026-61195-2 (this release has been discontinued)

7. A) Adrian Boult, London Philharmonic Orchestra, recorded November 1969; 1991 EMI Classics CDM 7 64020 2

B) Boult’s original mono recording by the same orchestra in December 1953 was reissued in a collection of Vaughan Williams’ symphonies in 2002; Decca 4732412. Also issued in 1989 as Decca/London 425 157-2

8. Vernon Handley, Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, recorded April 1990; 1991 EMI Eminence CDM 7 64034 2; the same performance is also available on a Classics for Pleasure compilation (2002) EMI 7243 5 75313 2 0

9. Bryden Thomson, London Symphony Orchestra, recorded June 1989; 1989 Chandos CHAN 8796

10. Bernard Haitink, London Philharmonic Orchestra, recorded 1985; 1986 EMI CDC 7 47516 2

THE FILM MUSIC OF RALPH VAUGHAN WILLIAMS Volume I (2002)

What may be Vaughan Williams’ best film score, the music for Scott of the Antarctic, released in 1949, is now presented as a whole for the first time on CD. In the film, less than half of the original score was used; many of the movements played on this CD were shortened for the film and have not been heard in full, others were not used at all. Vaughan Williams later reworked the film score into the Sinfonia Antartica (7^th Symphony), which still remains the standard for classical Antarctic symphonic music today.

The 41-minute suite on this CD contains all the music composed for the film over eighteen separately titled themes, nearly as long as the full symphony. It is a treat to hear the never-before-heard themes and music, which has, dare we say it, been frozen and iced over for more than 50 years. The suite was played by the BBC Philharmonic under Rumon Gamba. Chandos Chan 10007

VAUGHAN WILLIAMS - SYMPHONY NO. 6/ FILM MUSIC (2000)

Vaughan Williams’ classic 1953 Sinfonia Antartica (7^th Symphony) was developed from the soundtrack music of the British Ealing Studio’s 1949 film Scott of the Antarctic. The present CD of Vaughan Williams’ film music may be the first to present the original film music in disc format. The seven short pieces (totalling eight minutes), played by The Philharmonia Orchestra in 1948, conducted by Ernest Irving, were first issued on a 78 rpm record and represent various key scenes from the movie and most of them are recognizable in the later full symphony movements. Pearl GEM 0107 www.pavilionrecords.com; The same pieces were also released on another Pearl compilation, BRITISH FILM MUSIC Volume 1 (2000), which has a cover photo of a sun blaring over a typical Antarctic coastal scene of mountains and pack ice. Pearl GEM 0100.

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Other Classical Antarctica:

ON COURSE by Laurie Altman (2008)

Laurie Altman is an assistant professor of music at Westminster Choir College of Rider University in Princeton, New Jersey. He has received many classical commissions for compositions and has performed as a jazz artist in numerous clubs and events worldwide. This CD is a compilation of his compositions dating from 1985 and contains the 13-minute, 3-part Suite, Three Antarctic Songs for Baritone and Piano, which includes the tracks On Course, Within Limitless Space and Does an Emperor Penguin Meditate. The baritone is Elem Eley, with Laurie Altman at the piano. The second piece is the 5½-minute On Course for Instrumental Octet, which includes flutes, clarinet, piano vibraphone, violin, maracas and conductor. Laurie told us that “the Antarctic pieces found their inspiration from a trip that my wife and I took to Antarctica in February of 2006. The CD contains two On Course Pieces: An instrumental Octet and a setting of three Antarctic poems of mine for Baritone and Piano. There were numerous other pieces that emerged as a result of that trip as well.”

According to the liner notes for Three Antarctic Songs, “I became haunted with trying to find a sound that would take me closer to the emptiness, the vastness, the color and pristine stillness of that place. (Wide spacings; few clusters; a joining of some – ancient and new). The two outer pieces of the set, On Course and Does an Emperor Penguin Meditate are short and relatively straightforward in their presentation. Within Limitless Space truly attempts to capture the emptiness and vastness to which I alluded earlier. The three falsetto insertions were almost like a voice, Shackleton’s perhaps, speaking (da lontano) from the sea, a faint ember, “seemingly to nowhere”. On Course, the instrumental octet, is the most overtly programmatic work on the CD. It is to be heard with the breeze in your face, fourteen knots of speed underfoot, all attended by weather, ship motion and the natural elements of light, birds, ice and seals all around. Structural content is almost song-like: AABCA with an intense and dramatic ostinato mantra carrying the piece and its players forward and On Course. It is for me a tone painting, a work of color and vibrancy, never wavering in both its intensity and relentlessness.” The cover photograph of misty blue-grey pancake sea ice was taken by Laurie’s wife, Jeannine Hummel, on this 2006 trip with National Geographic.

Lyrics for On Course, about being in the Drake Passage: “The thrust, the push forward,“Steady”, “Port Ten”, “Starboard Five”, pitch and roll, a wave, the hint of a breeze, “Midships”, getting there, vacuous space. Waiting, observing, fingers chilled, tears, the wind, frigid, unremitting, “Steady”, the sky, grey, painted on, sculpted, an Albatross alone in search of, diving, drifting, “Port Ten”, Seals floating, the thrust, the push breathless, surrounded all sides, water spraying, “Starboard Five”, everything moving, “Steady”, forward, getting there, fleeting, head wind, getting there, the thrust, the push, getting there, forward, forever, On Course. On Course.”

Lyrics for Within Limitless Space, about being in the Weddell Sea: “Within limitless space, an ice field blue, white and grey. Four a.m., a sky, textured, tufted with light shards. Pin pricks, crystals expanding, rolling, compressed, broken, blue, a Petrel in flight, seemingly, to nowhere. Within limitless space, The weight of an iceberg, below itself, rolling, calving breaking apart, the eye sees beginning, limitless space to be filled (a music score), the horizon. A Chinstrap Penguin, floating sideways, seemingly, to nowhere. In a turn a mountain broken off, something larger, before the sea, yielding to nothing but itself. A lone Weddell Seal, asleep, awakens to space, limitless (no less tomorrow than today). Warmed by the sun deep in a dive, seemingly, to nowhere.”

Lyrics for Does an Emperor Penguin Meditate?, on Booth Island: “Thirty five days, molting, tall upon snow and ice, frigid, a promontory, wind, fifty knots, barely, a quiver. Determined, elemental proof of something so unique, a way of being. Do you question As you wait. Do you Dear Penguin, ever Meditate?

Albany Records TROY1041; www.albanyrecords.com; www.lauriealtman.com

MUSIC FROM SEVEN CONTINENTS Vol. 3 by the Cincinnati Boychoir (2008)

Founded in 1965, the Cincinnati Boychoir, directed by Randall Wolfe, gives numerous local subscription concerts and has performed with the Vienna Boys Choir, symphony orchestras, and gives concerts for community organizations as well as touring internationally. Their latest CD includes four song tracks related to the seventh continent, Southward, The Maid’s Lament and The Ice King by Gerald S. Doorly and Humpback Whales by Wendy Mae Chambers. The Morning was the relief ship sent to resupply Robert Scott’s Discovery Expedition of 1901-04 and during its 1902 voyage to Antarctica, the third officer, Lieut. Gerald Doorly, a talented pianist and entertainer, and the chief engineer, J.D. Morrison, as lyricist, collaborated on a collection of songs that were performed during musical evenings on the ship’s piano, accompanied by riotous noisemaking. More in the vein of Victorian parlour songs than sea shanties, the songs were published in 1943, apparently in a very tame version of the originals. Wendy Mae Chambers is a New Jersey-based pianist and composer who travelled to the Antarctic Peninsula in 1999 and recorded a solo piano CD ANTARCTICA SUITE, which included Humpback Whales. Randall Wolfe told us that in concert “The boys make sounds of whales and dolphins (and can imitate the sounds remarkably well), while some boys pour water from one plastic pitcher into another and also back and forth between plastic glasses, while other boys make bubble sounds with their lips. We ask the audience to close their eyes and imagine travelling underwater to Antarctica. The boys love this music!” www.cincinnatiboychoir.org; (see also THE SONGS of the ‘MORNING’: a Musical Sketch by G. S. Doorly (2002) in this section below and also ANTARCTICA SUITE by Wendy Mae Chambers (1999) in the following “Non-Classical, all or significantly Antarctic” commentary.)

STRING THEORY and CINEMATIC WINGS (both 2007) by Jeffrey Gold (Web site download only)

Gold, based in Utah, is a multi-talented film producer, composer, playwright and university film/theatre educator. From an early start as a published physicist and mathematician, while still an undergraduate, his films, compositions and plays have premièred in both the U.S. and Britain and won many awards. His collection of instrumentals on String Theory includes the tracks Shackleton (Theme) and Shackleton (South Georgia Island). Cinematic Wings has Shackleton’s Return and Antarctica by Air. All of these are beautiful, lush, majestic pieces with rich symphonic strings. Jeffrey told us that “The motivation for the tracks is the inspiration that Antarctica alone generates. There are people drawn to Antarctica for reasons they do not understand; I am one of those people. I suppose it is the pristine serenity and Shackleton’s adventure is the best survival story in existence.” www.jeffreygold.com

SHADOW DANCES - GUITAR MUSIC BY NIGEL WESTLAKE - Played by Slava Grigoryan (2006)

Australian Grigoryan (a native of Kazakhstan) recorded this performance of fellow Australian Nigel Westlake’s Antarctica – Suite for Guitar and Orchestra in 2004 with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. The guitar concerto was completed in 1992 and had its origin from his soundtrack to the IMAX film of the same name. The four movements, totalling 23 minutes on this CD, rework musical ideas from the film, as well as developing others not included in it. The four tracks are The Last Place on Earth, Wooden Ships, Penguin Ballet and The Ice Core – Finale. ABC Classics 476 5744; www.rimshot.com.au (Nigel Westlake’s web site)

PLANET EARTH - Music from the BBC TV Series – music composed and conducted by George Fenton (2006)

BBC’s massive 11-part television documentary about the earth’s various and extreme habitats goes from pole to pole and oceans to mountains. The ICE WORLDS instalment includes the following lavish symphonic themes performed by the BBC Concert Orchestra: Discovering Antarctica, The Humpbacks’ Bubblenet, Everything Leaves but the Emperors, The disappearing Sea Ice, Lost in the Storm. EMI 0946 381891 2 1; www.bbc.co.uk/nature/animals/planetearth

JOURNEYS by Young Voices of Melbourne (2005)

Young Voices of Melbourne is an Australian choir, founded in 1990, by its director, Mark O’Leary. With 130 singers between 6 and 18 years of age, it has traveled internationally and is committed to the performance of new Australian music. One of the tracks on this disc is the 6½ minute Shackleton, for 3-part voices and piano, by the Sydney, Australia composer and performer Paul Jarman. The piece is from his song cycle Turn on the Open Sea, which pays tribute to the adventurers of the sea. It was commissioned for the Sydney Children’s Choir in 2001. According to the liner notes, “The triumphant story of Sir Ernest Shackleton’s Endurance expedition to the Antarctic in 1914 has become one of the popular tales of modern exploration. Against all odds, Shackleton and his men survived a two-year ordeal, trapped without a ship, during a freezing winter in the most remote and unexplored region of the globe. Thanks to intuitive leadership and incredible persistence, Shackleton not only returned to Europe, but did so without losing a single crew member. The impossible boat journey across the great Southern Ocean in the 20-foot ‘James Caird’, and the successful navigation of South Georgia remains the greatest quest in the annals of the sea. On returning to England, several of the crew enlisted to fight on the red fields of Flanders, and within weeks, two men perished in battle.” The song is a very beautiful hymn to the irony of their return – simple, elegant and one of our favourite Antarctic melodies. Lyrics are:

“Old man, looking out to the sea, This time he’s leaving, Windswept hair and strong old bones, Now gently fading no longer sailing.

Oh many years ago, can you remember? The haunting cry of a ship that drowned, Beneath the ice floe of the Weddell Sea.

Times were hard, but we made it over, Made it over, they wonder why, Through the cold, but we made it over, Made it over, they’ll never know.

Two years trapped in the southern sea, Far from our homeland, Roaring waves and wailing winds, May well defeat us, but hopes were high. Oh please tell me why, we’re most forgotten, Far away from a world at war, Who needs a hero, Who needs to know?

Times were hard, but we made it over, Made it over, they wonder why, Through the cold, but we made it over, Made it over, they’ll never know. Why, why, did we have to come home to war? Why, why, why? Try, try, tell me what are we fighting for? Try, try, try.

Then, on the red fields of Flanders, All men were fallen, A bloody war, fought on every shore, Brought pain and sorrow to a sailing man.

But I still hear the steam whistle blowing, ‘Twas the day of wonders, Frozen tears and heartfelt cheers, Never forgotten, We made it over.

Times were hard, but we made it over, Made it over, they wonder why, Through the cold, but we made it over, Made it over, they’ll never know.

Why, why, did we have to come home to war? Why, why, why? Try, try, tell me what are we fighting for? Try, try, try.

Why, why, did we have to come home to war? Why, why why? Try, try tell me what are we fighting for? Try, try, try.

We made it over! We made it over!” YVMCD006; www.yvm.com.au (See also NEW LIGHT NEW HOPE by Gondwana Voices (2003), referenced below in this section.)

ANTARCTICA by Elizabeth Brown (2005)

Elizabeth Brown, a New York (Brooklyn)-based composer and flautist, is a 2007 Guggenheim Fellowship recipient and has composed for various commissions. One of her pieces is Antarctica, a 7-minute alto flute solo with prerecorded sound accompaniment. While it has not been released on CD, Elizabeth provided a recorded copy of her performance of it. The flute seems an ideal instrument to convey ethereal Antarctic impressions and the background instruments, windscapes, breathing and vocalizations provide some great atmospherics. In 2008 Elizabeth provided us with her program notes for her composition: “During the winter of 2004-05, Sara Wheeler’s book Terra Incognita: Travels in Antarctica was my bedtime reading. I started to dream about Antarctica, and this music was born in those dreams. I chose alto flute because of its range and timbre, and the taped portion consists of natural sounds recorded in my Brooklyn studio. Antarctica was commissioned by Patti Monson, who premiered it on July 16th, 2005, at the Bang on a Can Summer Institute at Mass MoCA.” www.elizabethbrowncomposer.com

MARCH OF THE PENGUINS Original Score by Alex Wurman (2005)

Whether a cynical marketing ploy or a desire for cultural adaptation, the English version of this French film has serious narration by Morgan Freeman and a studio orchestra playing a pleasant New Age soundtrack by composer Wurman. There are titles such as The Harshest Place on Earth (played on not so harsh-sounding harps, flutes and tinkling piano), and other musical excursions such as Walk Not Alone, The March, Walk Through Darkness, First Steps and Arrival at the Sea. The soundtrack sounds great with the film but as a self-contained listening experience is a bit too sweet to convey convincingly the harsh Antarctic home of the Emperor penguins. The film became a huge hit, particularly for a documentary and the English version won the Oscar for best documentary feature film of 2005. Milan M2-36131; www.marchofthepenguins.com; (See also LA MARCHE DE L’EMPEREUR by Emilie Simon (2005) in the following “Non-Classical, all or significantly Antarctic” commentary.)

AMSTERDAM – Brass Band Music of the Netherlands (2005)

This CD of tracks from various composers, played by the accomplished Provinciale Brassband Groningen, conducted by Siemen Hoekstra, includes Antarctica, by Carl Wittrock, a Dutch composer and conductor (b. 1966). The liner notes explain that “Carl Wittrock became inspired by huge ice fields surrounding the south pole. Colorful and majestic sounds provide the composition with a fascinating view of this “6^th” continent. This composition is a free impression of the spectacular scenery in the Antarctic. Melodies are linked together to convey the various aspects of the landscape. These melodies together with their simple harmonic accompaniments make this work pleasant for both the listener and the musician.” Carl told us in 2007 that “The main reason was the impressive nature. It is very beautiful, but also untouchable and dangerous. The composition was made as a sort of movie music without movie.” Gobelin Records 05.002; www.gobelinmusic.com

INTRODUCING THE FANFARE BAND - Fanfarekorps Koninklijke Landmacht (2003)

The same piece of music, Antarctica, by Carl Wittrock, is also on this Dutch compilation CD of brass band music by the Royal Netherlands Army (FKKL) Fanfare Band, conducted by Jan Nellestijn. Gobelin Records 03.001 & 03.002; www.gobelinmusic.com

ANTARCTICA - Johan Willem Friso Kapel (unknown date)

Carl Wittrock’s Antarctica, also appeared on another brass band compilation disc of the same name, now discontinued, conducted by Gert Jansen. CD not verified.

THE HAROUN SONGBOOK - CHARLES WUORINEN SERIES by Charles Wuorinen (2004)

This is a collection of excerpts from Wuorinen’s opera Haroun and the Sea of Stories, which is based on author Salman Rushdie’s 1990 children’s book of the same name. Rushdie wrote the book as a fable and allegory after the well publicized fatwa that led to his life of escape underground. The story revolves around a professional story teller who loses his gift of gab. His son then goes on adventures to return his father’s livelihood. The music on the CD, for four singers (soprano, mezzo-soprano, tenor and bass-baritone) and piano accompaniment, was written by Charles Wuorinen, an acclaimed modernist composer, pianist and conductor who was the youngest composer to win the Pulitzer Prize in music in 1970. The lyrics are by English poet and journalist James Fenton. One of the adventures is a polar trip with the short track To the South Pole. Sample lyrics: “It’s getting even colder And the waters are losing their colour. We’re going the right way! We can tell! Before it was filthy! Now it’s Hell!...You can stop a cheque. You can stop a leak or three. You can stop traffic, but You can’t stop me. To the South Pole. Full speed ahead to the South Pole…To the South Pole…These are the waters of neglect. These are the seas of disgrace. Give me a year and I expect I could clean this place.” Albany Records TROY664; www.charleswuorinen.com

MIRRORS OF FIRE - Australian Guitar Originals - Played by Tim Kain (2004)

Australian Kain, together with the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra, perform (in 1997) Nigel Westlake’s Antarctica - Suite for Guitar and Orchestra, a 22-minute guitar concerto completed in 1992 that had its origin from his soundtrack to the IMAX film of the same name. In four movements, it reworks musical ideas from the film as well as developing others not included in it. Tall Poppies TP169; www.tallpoppies.net

The same recording of Antarctica - Suite for Guitar and Orchestra, with Tim Kain, is included in OUT OF THE BLUE (2004), a compilation of three works by Westlake, performed by the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra, conducted by David Porcelijn. ABC Classics ABC 462 017-2; www.rimshot.com.au

MUSIC FROM SEVEN CONTINENTS Vol. 2 by the Cincinnati Boychoir (2004)

NEW LIGHT NEW HOPE by Gondwana Voices (2003)

Gondwana Voices is Australia’s national children’s choir, for ages 10 to 16, established in 1997 by artistic director/conductor Lyn Williams to perform new and traditional music, which showcases the country and its peoples. It has traveled internationally and is committed to commissioning works from Australian composers. One of the tracks on this disc is the 5½ minute Shackleton, a very moving, beautiful song by the Sydney, Australia composer and performer Paul Jarman. The performance by choir and piano is especially enriched by the accompaniment of a string section. The piece is from his song cycle Turn on the Open Sea, which pays tribute to the adventurers of the sea. It was commissioned for the Sydney Children’s Choir in 2001. It is a bittersweet tale of the survival Sir Ernest Shackleton’s Endurance Expedition’s Antarctic expeditioners and their return to a world still at war. On this disc, the conductor is also Mark O’Leary, who is the founder and director of another Australian children’s choir, Young Voices of Melbourne, which performed the same piece on one of their CDs. Australian Broadcasting Corporation ABC 472 822-2; www.gondwanavoices.com.au (See also JOURNEYS by Young Voices of Melbourne (2005), referenced above in this section.)

ANTARCTICA - NHK Television 50^th Anniversary Nankyoku Project (2003)

NHK (Japan Broadcasting Corporation), Japan’s sole public broadcaster, commemorated the 50^th anniversary of TV broadcasting in Japan in 2003 by establishing an HDTV broadcasting station in Antarctica in 2003. Located at Syowa Station, Japan’s base, this was Antarctica’s first such station and the first time a film crew stayed there for more than a year. 153 live programs were made, including the showing of a solar eclipse, distributed to the Discovery Channel in North America, auroras and natural scenery. The commemorative CD (Japan Version) contains some very melodic orchestral tracks, accompanied by various exotic Oriental musical instruments plus a jazzy solo guitar track, conducted by Yoko Matsuo. Titles include Horizon, White Wind, Dry Valleys, Silence and Dawn. As we haven’t seen the TV programs, it’s not easy to relate the very pastoral-sounding CD music by itself to the Antarctic, without the visuals. Toshiba-EMI Ltd. Eastworld TOCT-25014

ICESCAPE FOR ORCHESTRA by Chris Cree Brown (2002)

Chris Cree Brown is the Director (Academic) of the School of Music and Senior Lecturer at University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand, as well as the composer of a variety of music. The 16-minute work resulted from a trip to Antarctica in 1999, supported by the Artists to Antarctica programme of the New Zealand Antarctic Institute (Antarctica New Zealand). His first work produced under this programme was UNDER EREBUS (2000), a 15 minute electroacoustic piece, that according to the liner notes was an “attempt to create an expressive work of ‘sonic art’ that reflects my personal interpretation of the environment of Antarctica and my experiences there.” The range of sounds includes walking on snow, skuas, radio communications, wind, seals, penguins and a whiteout. Other Antarctic compositions by Chris include Circulus Antarcticus, a dance commission with Bronwyn Judge, a choreographer who went down to The Ice as part of the 2000 Artists to Antarctica programme and Antarctic Heart, music to go with a video by the sculptor Virginia King, who was the other artist to travel to Antarctica in 1999 under the Artists to Antarctica programme. www.music.canterbury.ac.nz/CCBrownlink/chrispers.htm

MUSIC FOR THE SCOTIA CENTENARY (2002)

The 1902 Scottish National Antarctic Expedition under William Bruce was a successful, but today under heralded, two-year voyage of discovery during which Coats Land, along the Weddell Sea, was discovered. The expedition was also the first to use a motion picture camera in Antarctica as well as the first to document the use of bagpipes to serenade emperor penguins (by Gilbert Kerr). To celebrate the centenary of this expedition, The Royal Scottish Geographical Society, The Royal Scottish Country Dance Society, the National Youth Orchestra of Scotland, B.B.C. Enterprises and piper Ian MacInnes collaborated to produce this CD.

The first half of the disc consists of seven traditional Scottish country dance tunes with titles such as Antarctica Bound, The Ice Cap, The Piper and the Penguin played by Neil Barron and his Scottish Dance Band. The main event, however, is a 24-minute orchestral suite, South, by Dundee composer Gordon McPherson, played by the National Youth Orchestra of Scotland, conducted by Nicolae Moldoveanu. It was commissioned by the orchestra, the Royal Scottish Geographical Society and supported by the Scottish Arts Council and has now been performed internationally. From an appropriately windy opening through some jangly, icy dissonances, this performance can take a proud place amongst the very few recorded orchestral pieces that have attempted to portray the moody, icy seventh continent. RSCDS CD032; www.rsgs.org

THE SONGS of the ‘MORNING’: a Musical Sketch by G. S. Doorly (2002)

The Morning was the relief ship sent to resupply Robert Scott’s Discovery Expedition of 1901-04. During the Morning’s 1902 voyage to Antarctica, the third officer, Lieut. Gerald Doorly, a talented pianist and entertainer, and the chief engineer, J.D. Morrison, as lyricist, collaborated on a collection of songs that were performed during musical evenings on the ship’s piano, accompanied by riotous noisemaking. More in the vein of Victorian parlour songs than sea shanties, the songs were published in 1943, apparently in a very tame version of the originals.

The present hearty and robust recording was undertaken as a Discovery centennial project and the Chorus contains all the adult male descendants of Gerald Doorly, along with professional colleagues and interested friends. The CD booklet includes the lyrics and words of the spoken passages between songs. All royalties from the sale are to be divided between the Dundee Heritage Trust and the New Zealand Antarctic Heritage Trust for their work on the original Expedition’s historic artefacts. Reardon Publishing; www.reardon.co.uk

INTO UNCHARTED SEAS by John Hearne (2001)

John Hearne, a British composer/singer/conductor based in Scotland, was commissioned by Dundee Orchestral Society to write an overture to commemorate the centenary of the launching in Dundee of Robert Scott’s Antarctic ship RRS Discovery in 1901. The ship itself has been preserved in Dundee, whose Symphony Orchestra premièred the 13-minute piece in 2001. It is a dramatic and undulating score, portraying the rough and tumble of the seas the ship must have sailed through in its long voyages. Although the piece has not apparently been released commercially on CD, we are grateful to John Hearne and Scottish Music Centre for making it available to us. www.scottishmusiccentre.com

SEA STAR by Martin Kiszko (music) and Anne Ridler (words) 2001

Martin Kiszko, of Polish-British origin, is a Bristol, UK-based composer who has orchestrated scores for over 200 films and TV productions, including works for the BBC and ITV. Anne Ridler (1912-2001) was an editor and librettist, considered to be Britain’s leading female poet. Sea Star is a 27-minute choral-orchestral work, performed by the Spiritual Sounds Festival Orchestra & Choir at Clifton Cathedral (Bristol) and conducted by David Ogden.

The composer-orchestrator, Martin Kiszko, told us: “The cantata was inspired by an Antarctic voyage I made in 2001 as well as from the desire to write a work about humankind’s journey from the sea to space.” While the words were completed first, the score remained incomplete for several years and the liner notes explain that “A turning point for the musical birth of Sea Star came in 2001 when I visited Antarctica. For the first time many of the images that Anne had created in the poem were experienced first hand: ice covered worlds, floes and hummocks, the stillness or energy of the sea, the vast sky; the slow bubbling of ice thawing and cracking or the sound of ice shelves calving into the sea causing waves to break against the shore. Sea Star’s first tutti orchestral chord, followed by the ebb and flow of gentle strings represent the first beats heard and the aftermath of such a calving in the Antarctic panorama. Other sections of the score aim to emulate the pattern of the landscape – the textures of snow and ice, the sky and changing light – these images assisted the interpretation of the text. Sea Star is a journey of even greater proportions than my Antarctic expedition. It travels from the depths of the oceans with its nascent aquatic life-forms, through land and sky to the far reaches of space where other waterworlds exist in the icecaps of Mars and ice-belts of Saturn. As the characters in the text ascend these levels, it is as if they are on a quest to understand their destiny.”

Anne Ridler’s text for the icy, Antarctic-influenced section of the cantata, subtitled The Earth, follows:

“But while ice covers your world, You do not wake. Cowled in darkness, Uttermost depth of sleep. Ice built of water – water built into solids, Condensed to crystal, unique in all the moving worlds, Yet cousin to other constellations: Ice moons, ice planets, plunging comets. You do not wake…Cowled in darkness, Uttermost depth of sleep. On the surface, a dazzling whiteness; Journeying inward, multiple rings of ice terrains; Floes and hummocks, pinnacles, bastions, Fractured and folded.”

Martin’s web site also mentions that during his 2001 Antarctic trip, he “composed, performed and claimed a world first by for a spoof Antarctic National Anthem (someone had to do it!)” As to a recording of it, Martin advised us that “As for the Antarctic National Anthem – this is a spoof piece recorded in Antarctica on video and not available I’m afraid.” HOXA HS 2052-LE; www.martinkiszko.com

SHACKLETON’S ANTARCTIC ADVENTURE – Original Giant Motion Picture Soundtrack Composed by Sam Cardon (2001)

Cardon is an American Emmy award-winning composer, who also worked on a 2002 Winter Olympics project. The IMAX film’s superb opening iceberg panorama is not to be missed, and the juxtaposition of historic photos of the Endurance Expedition with the present-day recreation flows seamlessly throughout this first-class film. The film score, played by the Northwest Sinfonia, conducted by Kurt Bestor, provides a variety of music: majestic orchestral themes, marching band music, melancholic Celtic pipes, fiddles, banjos and a Hovhanessque horn solo, reflective of the era and the activities the music portrays. Musical tracks include, among others, Wintering in the Pack, Hope and Survival, Into the Unknown/A Stern Night, A Grim Landfall and On to South Georgia. A more informative liner/booklet with notes about the music, the Endurance and filming expeditions would have been a welcome inclusion with the CD. WGBH Music (BMI)/ White Mountain Films Music JR74222

SHACKLETON – Original Score by Adrian Johnston (2001)

This was a two-part four-hour TV dramatization of Shackleton’s Endurance Expedition, directed by Charles Sturridge and featuring the prominent British actor Kenneth Branagh in the title role. Although said to be thoroughly researched, the film received some criticism for spending too long on the pre-Expedition details and not nearly enough time on The Ice, Elephant Island, South Georgia or the final rescue. The attractive orchestral sound track by British composer Johnston is performed on CD by the Philharmonia Orchestra, conducted by Terry Davies. Track titles portray scenes such as Sighting Ice, Locked in the Ice, Antarctic Night, Five Miles a Day, Sighting Land and Cracking Ice. Channel 4 Music C4M00172

SIR PETER MAXWELL DAVIES

Of special interest to classicists, the British Antarctic Survey and the London Philharmonia Orchestra commissioned prolific British composer Sir Peter Maxwell Davies to compose an Antarctic Symphony, his 8^thSymphony, for its première in May 2001. In 1997-98 Sir Peter spent three weeks at Britain’s Rothera Base on the Antarctic Peninsula experiencing life there. The BAS said, “Through this commission we hope to raise awareness of Antarctica as a unique scientific laboratory among people whose interests normally lie within the Arts. In turn we at BAS very much look forward to learning more about the world of serious music.” Sir Peter’s eloquent Antarctic diary is available at his web site and a CD recording and/or downloading of the symphony is also available at www.maxopus.com. The 41-minute recording by the Bremen Philharmonic Orchestra in 2003 provides a range of sounds from dissonances to melodic passages, reflecting the composer’s impressions and observations of his trip.

A stylistically similar companion piece, the 21-minute High on the Slopes of Terror, was composed in 1999 for the National Association of Youth Orchestras and was the first musical work resulting from Sir Peter’s Antarctic trip. The title refers to the extinct volcano on Ross Island near McMurdo Sound, Mt. Terror and the virtuoso work was recorded in 2001 by the UK’s Chetham’s Symphony Orchestra, the youth orchestra of Chetham’s School of Music. This piece is also available for download or on CD from Sir Peter’s web site at www.maxopus.com (site unavailable at this revision date).

LULIE the ICEBERG - Music by Jeffrey Stock, Story by Her Imperial Highness Princess Hisako of Takamado of Japan (1999)

Based on the Princess’ children’s book, written after she saw a lone iceberg drifting off Greenland, the “magical tale centers around a quest for the origins and destiny of life as seen through the eyes of an innocent and very brave iceberg, Lulie, as he embarks on a courageous ocean journey between the Arctic and the Antarctic, the two oldest living continents on the planet”. One of the movements is entitled South Pole.

Recorded at Carnegie Hall, the performance is narrated by Sam Waterston and the musicians include the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, Betty Baisch's Choral Associates, Yo-Yo Ma (cello), Pamela Frank (violin) and Paul Winter (saxophone).

This CD is hard to miss with the colourful iceberg, emperor penguins and humpback whales on the cover. Produced in co-operation with UNICEF and Icebridge, a forum of scientists and educators dedicated to the promotion of knowledge about the polar regions and the oceans. Sony Classical SK 61665

ON THE LAST FRONTIER by Einojuhani Rautavaara (1999)

This Finnish classical composer has become well known to North American audiences in recent years, particularly for his haunting 1972 Cantus Arcticus, an ode to the land of the Arctic Circle. On the Last Frontier (A Fantasy for Chorus and Orchestra, 1997) is based on the composer's interest, going back to childhood, in Edgar Allan Poe’s The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym. Published in 1837, this novella about Pym and a group of sailors marooned on a tropical island at the South Pole with a race of savages is considered to be seminal in Antarctic fiction and has spawned numerous like-minded stories. As Rautavaara approached his 70^th year, he took the book's closing plot and developed his own rich musical themes of imagined lands not yet explored. Ondine ODE 921-2

WALKING WITH DINOSAURS - Music from the BBC TV Series - composed by Benjamin Bartlett (1999)

The BBC Concert Orchestra takes us back in time to the Mesozoic era when dinosaurs ruled the land. The soundtrack includes the rather short Spirits of the Ice Forest which “explores the exotic woodland Antarctic - mirrored by a romantic theme tinged with Hispanic harmony” and the peaceful Antarctic Spring. BBC Music 7243 523458 2 3

2000 TODAY - a World Symphony for the Millennium - composed and conducted by Tan Dun (1999)

An international consortium of television broadcasters commissioned this dynamic musical mosaic for a millennium satellite transmission. The music presents a combination of classical western instrumentation including the BBC Concert Orchestra, choirs, soloists, world instruments and chants “to capture the poetic spirit of the world’s regions”. Included is the percussive Antarctica. Sony Classical SK 61529

LUBOMÍR BRABEC PLAYS BACH IN ANTARCTICA by Lubomír Brabec (1997)

The CD title is somewhat misleading as this music was recorded in the Czech Republic; however, the liner notes indicate that classical guitarist Brabec performed these works on his 1997 trip to Antarctica on board a Greenpeace ship and at one of the bases. “Just as Antarctica was unknown, not to mention unvisited, in J. S. Bach’s day, Bach himself was only known to a narrow group of connoisseurs. I think there are certain parallels: the grandeur, monumental beauty and power of Bach’s music, and the mysterious fascination and power of this mystic continent that belongs to no-one and yet everyone. In both these entities, Antarctica and Bach’s oeuvre, we can sense the presence of something transcendent, something that goes beyond us. It was to the greater glory of this principle, God, that Bach wrote this music.”

Brabec may be on to something here, as we await someone to lug a grand piano or bring a brass band to the shores of Antarctica for what might truly be the first professional recording of a musical performance on the continent. Supraphon SU 3338-2 131

FROM AUSTRALIA – John Williams, guitar (1994)

This CD of world première recordings by Australian composers includes Antarctica - Suite for Guitar and Orchestra by Australian Nigel Westlake. Westlake wrote the score for the IMAX film Antarctica and later reworked it into this longer 1992 guitar concerto in four movements. Highlights are the stately Wooden Ships and a shimmering piece called Penguin Ballet, which captures emperor penguins frolicking beneath the ice. Sony Classical SK53 361

ANTARCTIC SYMPHONY – various composers (1993)

This CD is a compilation by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation of existing older, non-Antarctic classical music, interspersed with the actual sounds of Antarctic wildlife and human activities on The Ice, in an effort to evoke a feeling of Antarctica. The music includes pieces by Vivaldi, Duruflé, Boccherini, Roussel, Sibelius and Nielsen. The non-musical interludes include a kitchen sink of sounds of penguins, seals, petrels, skuas, katabatic winds, huskies, ships moving in ice, helicopters and radio room/flight operation conversations.

According to the liner notes, “Antarctica is a wilderness most people have some idea of, though very few have been there. Perhaps Australians are more aware; Antarctica is closer to us, though still very inaccessible. We have a national responsibility for part of it, and ‘part’ is a very large area indeed. Many of us will know someone who has been there, maybe even someone whose life was changed by spending time there. The race to the South Pole, lost to Amundsen by Scott and his party, the drawn out suffering and human loss as they tried to return – these are among the Australian epics, tales to children and remembered by adults.

The makers of this record haven’t visited Antarctica, though they received the sound recordings from people who have. For us, the sound effects were the introduction to the Antarctic world. As on the previous discs in this series, the idea is to appeal to the aural imagination, stimulating it with music and natural sounds, together and side by side.

The first paradox we found was that Antarctica seemed to demand the inclusion of some human sounds. In our other wildernesses, bush and sea, music provided the humanising element. In ANTARCTIC SYMPHONY there are even more bird and animal presences than in Sea Symphony, but the sounds captured on tape constantly remind the listener that any human presence is a struggle against the elements. We have introduced human voices for the first time, so that we can wonder that people are there at all.

“Symphony” mainly implies music from the European tradition. The sounds, rather than the music in this series, evoke the landscape, but it is no accident that music which can live with Antarctica was composed close to the northern, Arctic wastes…

Paradox No. 2: the trackless wastes of ice and snow seemed to call for a wider, not a narrower range of music and musical emotions. A strange environment, so that strange music is not out of place, like Boccherini’s startling eighteenth century phantasms of a Spanish city by night. Humour, from the dogs and their bluff handlers, releases an energy and directness typical of the music of Roussel, the ship’s officer turned composer. The seasons in Antarctica, we imagine, could hardly be like those of Vivaldi’s Venice, but his music, matching a poem describing an icy winter scene, seems right as our soundscape approaches the great southernmost continent…” ABC Music/Phonogram/Polygram 514 639-2

ANTARCTICA - The Film Music, composed by Nigel Westlake (1992)

The 37-minute CD of the score of the IMAX film Antarctica has thirteen mostly short orchestral tracks of various themes portrayed in the movie, four of which were developed into the previously mentioned guitar concerto. The CD is well played and recorded and the music, conducted by Carl Vine, conveys the dramatics of its theme titles. Tall Poppies TP012; www.tallpoppies.net; www.rimshot.com.au

TO THE ENDS OF THE EARTH - Original Soundtrack Recording - music composed and conducted by John Scott (1988)

This is the soundtrack for the William Kronick-produced, written and directed documentary film about The Transglobe Expedition, led by Ranulph Fiennes. Over a three-year period ending in 1982, the team circumnavigated the globe along its polar axis from North to South Poles, being the first to do so. The orchestral music is a pleasant listening journey and the Antarctic tracks include the titles Shackleton, Reaching Antarctica, On to the South Pole and The Scott Tragedy. Prometheus PCD102

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Non-Classical, all Antarctic or with significant Antarctic content:

GEEK DREAMS by the Primate Fiasco (2008)

Massachusetts-based Primate Fiasco is a Dixieland/pop music band with clarinet, tuba, banjo and other instruments. Their fun-time CD includes a poke at global warming with the track Global Warming. Sample lyrics: “You can blame it on your tail pipe at the end of the world, but I know why it’s getting hot in here. I blame global warming on that girl…I blame global warming on the girl who gave no warning that her smile in the morning would make the sun forget its way. Admitting that they have a crush, the polar caps begin to blush. The ocean stalks her closer every day.”) Another track is titled South Pole and the Pyramids. Sample lyrics: “All I have is the sunrise on the beach. The South Pole and the Pyramids are all within reach. All I have is the history of Rome and the sense to know when I’m home. I got signs to read and a brain to feed and that’s all I need.” Dave DelloRusso, the band’s main composer, guitarist/banjo player and a vocalist has a great interest in the unexplained mysteries of the world. He told us that the cryptic lyrics “have to do with my own crazy theories about the history of humanity, past and future. Those who carry the same knowledge and theories tend to pick up on it.” www.theprimatefiasco.com

SERVE CHILLED by Medwyn Goodall and Tim Rock (2008)

Cornwall, U.K.-based Goodall is a prolific master New Age composer, musician and producer of thematic CDs. According to the liner notes, his latest melodic work is “inspired by a unique environment under threat from global warming…the CD also incorporates the actual atmospheres of snowstorms, ice caves and under a frozen sea. The sounds of penguins, whales and seals weave in and out of the music as it takes you across a white world.” The CD liner has a great photo of a sinister looking, weather-sculpted iceberg as well as penguins and seals on icy shorelines. MG Music MGCD105; www.mgmusic.ltd.uk

ANTARCTIC SONGBOOK by Ian Tamblyn (2008)

Ian Tamblyn is a veteran Ottawa-area musician, playwright and educator/guide on nature cruise ships, who has made trips to both the Arctic and Antarctic regions. During the 2007-08 Students on Ice Expedition to the Antarctic Peninsula, which included about 64 international students and 25 educators/chaperones, Tamblyn was the team minstrel. He told us that the “songs were written for the most part on the expedition”, with a few from his previous CDs. These songs are a tribute to Antarctica and according to the liner notes, “added a whole new way of understanding, appreciating and digesting everything we were experiencing. Most of the students had them memorized before we returned to South America! And now we have this CD as a lasting memory, gift and legacy for the International Polar Year and our incredible journey of discovery to the bottom of the world.” The tracks of melodic, acoustical folk-rock include such titles as Paradise Bay, Albatross, Gentoo Penguin, With the Whales-Deception Island and The Emperors. Students on Ice is a Gatineau, Québec-based award-winning program led by Geoff Green, dedicated to providing high school and university youth with educational expeditions to the Arctic and Antarctic regions, accompanies by world-class teams of scientists, environmentalists and other specialists. ITCD-2008; www.tamblyn.com; www.studentsonice.com; (See also ANGEL’S SHARE (2004) and THE BODY NEEDS TO TRAVEL (1997) by Ian Tamblyn in the following “Individual Antarctic songs” commentary.)

ELEGI FOR ROALD AMUNDSEN by Hornorkesteret (2008) (Web site download only)

This anniversary tribute collection to polar hero Roald Amundsen may well be one of the most original and unusual recorded musical portrayals of an Antarctic theme. Jonas M. Qvale is the founder and a member of Norwegian group Hornorkesteret, formed in 1999 as an experimental art project, which has played in concert halls, museums, in the woods, on mountaintops and contributed to films and theatre. He told us that “I run a band called Hornorkesteret, The Norwegian Polar Orchestra, and we play soundscapes and experimental music on stringed reindeer antlers, stones, drums flutes, logs, ice, coffee percolators and other things. Our main musical concern is the forces of nature, and in particular how they are expressed in the Polar Regions. We have also been very inspired by polar exploration and the period from 1860-1920, when the last “white areas” on the globe were charted and “conquered”. We also find inspiration in the animals of the Polar Regions and their struggle to survive.

By amplifying the reindeer antlers with contact microphones, we are able to get a range of unusual sounds - from the underwater calls of Arctic and Antarctic animals like walrus, seals, various whales and penguins to creaking ship hulls, ice floes, ice shelves breaking off and howling winds.

We have just released an MP3 single commemorating the 80 years since polar hero Roald Amundsen disappeared in the Arctic with the seaplane Latham 47. The title track, Elegi for Roald Amundsen features the vocals of another great Norwegian polar hero, Fridtjof Nansen, taken from his speech at Amundsen’s funeral. Two other tracks related to Amundsen are included on this release, Mot Sydpolen (Towards the South Pole), an imagined soundtrack to the trek towards the Pole in 1911, and Mandolin Under et Vindu (Mandolin Under a Window), which looks at Amundsen’s youth and his early determination to make a name for himself in the Polar regions. Finally, a live version of the title track is included, recorded at the memorial monument at Amundsen’s birthplace in Borge, Norway at a memorial ceremony on the 18^th of June 2008, complete with birdsong and rustling leaves.”

Towards the South Pole is a wonder of feral squawks, bleats and percussion, underlain by a menacing bass and as marching music might be more than adequate to encourage anyone to trek to the Pole and back. www.hornorkesteret.no; www.myspace.com/hornorkesteret

An off-shoot project began in 2001 with Hornorkesteret recordings that were inadequate due to technical and other sound problems. These were organized along with material from other electronical sound sources under the cultural sharing network ORIGAMI ANTARKTIKA. According to their website, the goal is “to freeze down, time-stretch, to punctuate or blur these sounds. To submerge everything in the black waters of Lake Vostok, perhaps never to come back, perhaps to become new soundscapes one day. The low activity of this unit is due to extremely cold temperatures. When things are frozen, the atoms don’t ‘die’ or stop moving, they just slow waaaay down.” www.myspace.com/origamiantarktika

ANTARCTIC by Mac Lauren (undated) (Web site download only)

Mac Lauren, from Hobart, Tasmania is an Australian singer-songwriter who has travelled his native land, designed and built green power units and been an electrical contractor. He overwintered in Antarctica and produced three songs from his experiences for his web site. Peace of Mind is a relaxing guitar/harmonica instrumental. The other two tracks are sung in a husky baritone and are very expressive of the strong emotions of beauty and longing brought out by The Ice. Lyrics to Antarctic: “And the beauty of it all becomes clear, as we draw near. South of here there’s an ocean as wide as any known. Grey mountains marching endlessly, the albatross above surfs the air, fortune we share. Antarctic, the beauty of silence, land of the storm. Lift off the deck into a perfect sky, perfect sky. Once around the ship and we’re climbing high. Around the horizon cathedrals float in a frozen sea. I recall her icy breath over me. Antarctic, the beauty of silence, land of the storm. Antarctic, the beauty of silence, land of the storm.”

Lyrics to Return to Australia: : “Where have you been, long lost son? Finally, spring has come. Stretch the days. Draw the life, back to this land, this land of ice. Why does a world so cold, bring fire to the soul? This line on the map in the mess, reading daily, sailing south southwest. Moving an inch a day, slowly and surely coming our way. Red ship is in the bay. Stand by to R.T.A. I’ll never leave you cold. I’ll warm your heart and soul. I’m tired of loving over the phone. I’m meant to hold you. I’m coming home. Red ship is in the bay. I’m on for R.T.A. I’ll never leave you cold. I’ll warm your heart and soul, your heart and soul. Red ship is in the bay. Stand by to R.T.A. We’re coming home.” www.maclaurenmusic.com

ANTARCTICA SUITE by Hunter Johnson (2007) (Web site download only)

Hunter Johnson is a California-based musician who grew up in Southeast Asia and moved to Portland, Oregon for his high school years. He has worked independently as an artist and producer for musical projects and for television. This downloadable suite of 13 melodic, instrumental synthesizer pieces began as musical impressions for the paintings and photographs of the visual artist, J. J. L’Heureux, also based in California. L’Heureux has visited the continent five times and has been an Antarctic expedition artist with Quark Expeditions. The themed track titles will be familiar to any Antarctic visitor and include Wilderness Theme, Encounter with Sea & Ice, All Ice Melts, Penguins in Paradise Bay, Frozen Rivers, Walk to the Rookery, Dawn Down Iceberg Alley, White Wilderness, Lemaire Passage, Ice Caps Melting, Crossing the Circle and Zodiac Exploration. In late 2007, Johnson accompanied L’Heureux and a Swiss filmmaker on board the Golden Fleece, a 65-foot motor sloop, which circumnavigated South Georgia, and is composing background music for the video adventure. www.hunterjohnsonmusic.com; www.jjlheureux.com; www.penguinspirit.com

ANTARCTICA by Gill de la tourette (2007) (Web site download only)

De la tourette (Steven Tevels) is a Belgian native and electronica artist. His 39-minute, 6-track Antarctica is a bleak, minimalist ambient work and according to the web site “is a concept CD dedicated to the experimental pioneers who discovered and explored Antarctica...The first impressions of an untouched mighty new land. Extreme circumstances, never ending icy winds, random noisy silence, white absolute monochrome landscapes, hunger, cold, no daylight in winter, the suffering, tiredness and isolation...An audiosonic story, a melodic journey through a world of dissected and strangely reassembled tones. On first listen, these soundscapes could easily sound like a stuttering mess, but give it time and the stutters become a string orchestra and the glitches become the delicate sound of a glockenspiel…” ca080; www.clinicalarchives.blogspot.com; www.myspace.com/gilldelatourette

ANTARCTICA by Metamorfrozen (2007) (Web site download only)

This dynamic 80-minute ambient work, containing 10 instrumental tracks, on a Polish net label dedicated to industrial, dark ambient, power electronica and experimental music, is “especially for all explorers of Polar landscapes.” Titles include Metamorformation, Polar Plateau, Snow Petrels Over the Pole, Diamond Dust, Dark Days Under Mount Terror, Aurora Australis, Subglacial Lakes, Winds Over the Cold Emptiness, Ice-o-lation and Mountains of Madness. No information on the artist in the Web site. KEMn53; www.kaos-ex-machina.pl/promotions

ENDURANCE by Irezumi (2007)

Irezumi is a former techno artist, based in France, who has created an album of richly desolate ambient music based on Shackleton’s Endurance Expedition. Haunting voiceovers on several of the tracks add to the imagined reality of the drama on ice, water and land, as portrayed in the music. A six panel digipak of bleak black and white photos, of what looks like Frank Hurley’s photographs of South Georgian mountains and glaciers, adds to the listening experience. As to the reason for the CD, a representative of the record label told us that, “Irezumi read some stuff about Shackleton, I think he also saw some documentaries. And it was enough for him to make an album.” Snowblood Snow01; www.myspace.com/irezumimusic

TILL ANTARCTICA by Elisa Korenne (2007)

Till Antarctica may well be the catchiest, upbeat, can’t-get-it-out-of-your-head Antarctic tune we’ve come across. It’s the theme song for the play Antarctica, which was written by Carolyn Raship and premièred at the New York City Fringe Festival in 2007. The play is about two schoolgirls who meet at school and plan to go to Antarctica to find the magnetic South Pole. Elisa Korenne is a New York-based singer/composer with numerous songwriting awards to her credit. While the song has not yet been commercially issued on a CD, we are eager to see take its rightful place as one of the greats of recorded Antarctic tunes. A song sample may be heard on the myspace website listed below. Sample lyrics: “Blue ice may freeze our feet, Blubber’s all there is to eat, I’m with you…No matter where you want to go, I’ll stay by your side, you know, I’ll see it through, I’ll stay with you, Till Antarctica. If penguins steal our sleeping bags, You break your legs on the icy crags, I’m with you. The wind could wail loud and cold, Snow blindness could take hold, I’m with you, I’m with you.” Elisa told us that “I haven't been to Antarctica (the only continent I haven't been to!) and I hear it's incredible. My images of Antarctica come from a variety of sources. Mainly, they come from the text of the play itself. The song was almost an accident. I was at a writing retreat trying to write a musical, and I was procrastinating. I read the play, and figured I ought to at least write a song based on it as a fun exercise if I wasn't going to be writing my musical. The other places my images come from are photographs I've seen of my friend kayaking the Arctic and photographs of the Endurance journey in Antarctica.” www.elisakorenne.com; www.myspace.com/antarcticatheplay

ANTARCTICA - Nature Recordings by Global Journey (2007)

Global Journey is a music, audio and video programming and distribution firm, dedicated to many and various lifestyle and nature themes, with offices in the U.K. and U.S. Its CDs are composed and performed by professional musicians and artists and the firm specializes in non mainstream markets. The Antarctica CD is a 51-minute presentation of wind, pounding water, storms and various wildlife sounds. According to the liner notes Antarctica is “a place of such raw beauty and unspoilt landscapes, a stunning wilderness of great importance. The polar experience is one of awe inspiring imagery from the Southern Lights (Aurora Australis) and whale-watching to the amazing penguin colonies and the glacial configurations.” Global Journey CD GJ3715; www.global-journey.com

ANTARCTICA - A Portrait in Wildlife and Natural Sound (2007)

Originally released on LP in 1971, this 48-minute British CD is a collection of 16 tracks of natural Antarctic sounds, including penguins, seals, birds, ice movement, blizzard, spring, rough seas and huskies. It was recorded over 1969-70 and produced by the then British Antarctic Survey meteorologist/filmmaker and later author, Edwin Mickleburgh. He has provided an extensive liner booklet with copious notes about the nature and wildlife of each recorded scene. Saydisc CD-SDL219; www.saydisc.com

ICE – PIANO SLIGHTLY CHILLED (2007) by Fiona Joy Hawkins; ANGEL ABOVE MY PIANO by Fiona Joy Hawkins (2006)

Fiona Joy is an Australian painter and pianist whose 2006 CD of romantic New Age piano presents a suite of Antarctic Interludes, which includes Crystal Desert, Dance of the Penguins, Flight of the Albatross and Angel Above My Piano. Her 2007 CD, with added percussion and accompaniment, contains Antarctic Wings, a perkier sounding reprise of Flight of the Albatross from her 2006 disc, as well as Snow Bird, a vocal version of the same piece. She told us, “I went out of New Zealand and into Hobart, Australia on an Orion Expedition Cruise (2005) - we went to the Antarctic Continent – most boats only go from South America to the Peninsula. I believe that less than six boats go there each year – we went to the lowest latitude you can sail to. The boat was fantastic and had two pianos on board – thus I could write as I looked out the window. As I am a conceptual writer, I need subject matter, and Antarctica is perfect to write music about. In my mind I captured what it is like, I hope other people agree – I guess it’s always something personal. I have to be honest, there were several places I went that I could hear no music whatsoever – it was simply too desolate and there was too much hardship (Scott’s Hut) – but the beauty of the ocean, the glaciers, the sunset, the mountains and the wildlife were irresistible to write about.” Fiona’s Antarctic video clips, including scenes of her playing the piano on the ship, have appeared on www.youtube.com (use Penguin Whisperer in the search box). Little Hartley Music FJH002 (2006 disc) and FJH003 (2007 disc); www.fionajoyhawkins.com; www.littlehartleymusic.com

ANTARCTICA SONGS by The Aquatic Ape Theory (2006) (Web site download only)

TAAT is the alter ego of San Diego-based Jim Behrens. This collection of folksy roots rock was recorded at the Australian Antarctic base, Davis Station and mixed onboard the supply ship RSV Aurora Australis. Tracks include White White (sample lyrics: “White white, everywhere you look is white, Sunlight comin’ up from below. My face is turning red, it’s time for me to go to bed and dream of dreams of home. I’ve been puttin’ in my time of workin’ on the line, and in this strange empty place filled with snow, day turns to night, someone forgot to turn off the lights.”), Sun Dogs, Amery, Vegemite and In a Tent (In a blizzard).

We asked Jim in 2008 about the background of his music and he provided the following remarkable biography: “I am a geophysicist, and was fortunate enough to spend two summer seasons working in Antarctica as a post-doc at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. I made a website during my second season (2006-07) where you can learn about the project and day-to-day life in the Antarctic: http://loose-tooth.ucsd.edu. At the top of the ‘science’ page there is a link to a YouTube video I put together that gives a good summary as well. On the ‘links’ page there is a link to photographs from the 2005-06 season, when the songs were written and recorded.

I brought my guitar and harmonicas, along with a bare-bones recording rig, during that first season, 2005-06. I spent two solid months living in tents on the Amery Ice Shelf as part of a 6-person field team, which is when I wrote the songs and lyrics. We were collecting seismic data by laying out geophone arrays and setting off small charges of dynamite, to measure the thickness of the ice and the depth of the seawater beneath us. One of the women in the team (Marianne Okal) was a classically-trained violinist, she brought a mandolin which she played wonderfully, and we wrote the music to Amery together, and she wrote her part for Sun Dogs. The album cover photo is a timed self-portrait of us posing in front of the midnight sun out on the ice shelf. We spent the final month of the season based back at Davis Station, where I stayed up late many nights to record the tracks in an empty room in the science building. The hard walls and high ceiling created a nice natural reverb. There is a band hut at Davis as well, and there were a surprising number of musicians down there that season. I set up and recorded the drum tracks in the hut one afternoon, after most everything else had been recorded to a click track. I played all the instruments except for some of the mandolin parts. I mixed the songs during the two-week icebreaker transit back to Hobart, Tasmania, and sent them off to get mastered once I returned to California.

The lyrics for White White, Sun Dogs, and Amery are my interpretations of and meditations on life on the ice shelf: being so far from home and spending the holidays with a small group of relative strangers; the overwhelming beauty, remoteness, and hostility of the environment; the interpersonal conflicts as well as the camaraderie; the mental and physical strain that accumulated over two months out there. I came up with the bridge for White White while on a long snowmobile transit one fine morning. The line ‘sun dogs, halos, iridescent rainbows’ refers to the unusual atmospheric optical effects that occur in the cold, clean air down there. One night when I got out of my tent around 2 am and a low fog had settled on the ice shelf, there were sun dogs projected into the fog that looked to be about 10 meters away from my face. Astonishing. Vegemite is about me learning to love the stuff. The expedition was run by the Australian Antarctic Division, and so there was an endless supply of Vegemite. I wrote that one in about 10 minutes, and recorded the guitar and vocals on the first take. In aTent (In a Blizzard) is actually two overlapping ambient sound recordings, made with the internal mic on my laptop, in two different tents on successive nights during a week-long blizzard. I had intended to record some spare, simple guitar to go with it, but ran out of time. I brought gear down again for the second season, but it was shorter, and when I was at Davis Station I had many more opportunities to get out on long multi-day hikes in the local area, which I couldn’t pass up. I made time for music as well, but was mostly jamming with the other musicians at the base, and never really got any substantial recording done.

Well that’s probably more that you wanted to know, but it’s not often that someone asks me about the music I make, which is my true passion in life. I always travel with at least a guitar, and am always writing songs as I go. I got about halfway through a proper album earlier this year, but had to put it on hold – I’ve been at sea in the Arctic now since May, but all the background noise on a ship makes it a bad place to record. Anyway, I’ll be back home soon, and back to my studio with new songs in my head.” www.jimbo.cc

HELLO ANTARCTICA by Max Marlow and Ma5kin3 (2006) (Web site download only)

Max Marlow is a German electronic musician whose 26-minute Hello Antarctica suite of five ambient tracks contains some appropriately sinister, icy themes that would be ideal background soundtracks for a creepy movie involving escapes through deep glaciers, crevasses and underground caverns. Metro024; www.retropublik.net; www.myspace.com/maxmarlow

THE COLDEST PLACE ON EARTH by Green Bean Music (2006)

Green Bean, based in Evanston, Illinois was formed in 2002 by teacher Bill Corrough and songwriter/producer Ryan Bassler to create enjoyable musical productions for students, teachers and parents. Their web sites says that, “Kids want to hear and sing songs that their big brothers and sisters listen to, not songs that sound like what adults think they like.” There are twelve musicals in their CD catalogue and this is a great one, about Antarctica, with the tracks The Coldest Place on Earth, Race to the Pole, Ice Formations, Antarctic Penguins, and Which Way is North. The up-beat songs are in three sets, with the first performed by Green Bean, the second has vocals by a group of children and the third has instrumentals only, for a sing along. The performance package also includes a data disc with the lyrics, music, spoken parts for the musical presentation and additional information about Antarctica with Web site references. Ryan told us that, “Our music company has been writing 2-3 musicals a year, and one of the recurring themes has been the Continents, so Antarctica was bound to happen sometime. Probably one of the only times you'll hear 200 kids singing about Ernest Shackleton.” Polyholiday Records phcdr206; www.greenbeanmusic.com

BLOODY SEA by Merzbow (2006)

Merzbow is a Japanese experimental electronic music project begun by Masami Akita in 1979. Alone or with numerous collaborators, he has released numerous CDs as well as books and articles about subcultures and recently, animal rights. Music may be a generous description of his abstract synthesizer mosaics, which might otherwise be described as noise. The present CD is a three-part Anti-Whaling Song, which may take more than three listenings to absorb. The sound is harsh and difficult to listen to, in keeping with the harsh, bloody and unpleasant topic.

The CD cover notes present a strident polemic against so-called Japanese scientific whaling in the Antarctic, which begins: “In November, 2006, the Japanese whaling fleet will set sail for the icy waters of Antarctica. Their target - 50 Humpback Whales, 50 Fin Whales and almost l000 Minke Whales. In the next l6 years, unless this obscene ‘scientific whaling’ program, known as JARPA 2, is stopped, the Japanese whaling fleet will slaughter l7,000 Minke Whales, 800 Humpbacks and 800 Fin Whales. The murder of these beautiful creatures spells the end of the global moratorium on the killing of whales as Japan’s so-called ‘scientific whaling’ is nothing more than a commercial killing operation. The Japanese Government subsidises its whaling industry with thousands of dollars each year. Japanese warehouses are piled high with mountains of unused whale meat. School children are given whale hamburgers and sausages in an attempt to turn them on to eating whale meat. The truth is that the market for whale meat in Japan is almost non-existent. Yet still the Japanese Government pursues its deadly agenda of turning the world’s oceans into a slaughterhouse for whales. Old whalers who worked in Antarctica in the fifties, when thousands and thousands of whales were killed, cannot wipe the memories of the hideous slaughter from their minds…..

Tell your family, friends, workmates that the whales will die unless we, the people act. There is legal action which can be taken to stop the slaughter. There is hope. Miracles can happen, but we must create the magic. The whales demand no less. The great mind in the waters is calling on caring humans to ensure their survival. This call is nothing less than the crossroads of our humanity, our survival. Do it!” VIVO2006022CD; www.merzbow.net

DARK ADVENTURE RADIO THEATRE PRESENTS H. P. LOVECRAFT’S “AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS” (2006)

The H. P. Lovecraft Historical Society (of Glendale, California) has adapted one of Lovecraft’s best regarded stories in the form of a spooky 75 minute radio play in the way it might have been produced in the 1930s. If you ever thought that early life oozed out of a tropical Antarctica, then this is for you. The story, originally written in 1931, appeared as a serialized edition in Astounding Stories in 1936 and was published as a novella in 1939. Byrd-era Antarctic technology is combined with unbounded sci-fi imagination in a university Antarctic expedition gone wrong. Despite the exaggerated imagery, this classic story asks a good question – how far should science go for the sake of curiosity? It concludes that some things are better left unsaid. www.cthulhulives.org

HP LOVECRAFT was also the name of a 1960s eclectic Chicago and later Marin County, California folk rock/ psychedelic band, which issued two records in 1967 and 1968. Both were issued as a CD package in 2000 and the second, HP LOVECRAFT II (1968) contains the track At the Mountains of Madness. Apparently about a bad acid trip, no Antarctic content is discernible, despite the notable title. Collector’s Choice Music 314542821-2; www.collectorschoicemusic.com

HAPPY FEET - Music from the Motion Picture (2006)

The Warner Bros.’ film about Mumbles, the Antarctic penguin who can’t sing but can tap dance up a storm became an early box office success and won the Oscar for best animated feature film of 2006. The recycled dance music of the soundtrack is sung by many currently hip singers but unfortunately there was no apparent attempt here to create fresh music that would be Antarctic in lyrics or mood. Warner Sunset/Atlantic CD83998; www.happyfeetmovie.com

ANTARCTIC JOURNAL – Original Soundtrack composed by Kenji Kawai (2005)

South Korean director Yim Pil-Sung has made an Antarctic mystery and psychological thriller about six expeditioners crossing the continent. After they find a journal from another expedition that disappeared 80 years ago, turmoil and terror abound. The soundtrack is pretty bleak and bare, likely matching the mood of the film, which has not yet caught any publicity in North America. Sony Music Direct (Japan) Inc. MHCP 840

ANTARCTICA - Musical Images from the Frozen Continent by Craig Vear (2005)

Vear, a British electro-acoustic composer and musician, won an Arts Council England Fellowship, in conjunction with the British Antarctic Survey’s Artists and Writers Programme, to spend three months over 2003/04 on British bases in the Antarctic Peninsula area. The result was the multi-media Antarctica, which includes a small book of his diaries and other commentaries, a CD of recorded Antarctic wildlife sounds, ice breaking and glacial melting, and a DVD. The DVD includes an electro-acoustic composition comprised of original field recordings of wildlife, mechanical and human sounds, portraying the interactions of the people with their environments. Enlighten Entertainment Ltd.; www.ev2.co.uk

LA MARCHE DE L’EMPEREUR by Emilie Simon (2005)

This is the soundtrack for the French film of the same name by Luc Jacquet (English title: March of the Penguins), a soaring flockumentary about the harsh frozen world of Emperor penguins. The original French version of the film has actors cutely voicing penguins while the English version has narration by Morgan Freeman and a different soundtrack. The original French film music, by Simon, a French singer and instrumentalist, is in an electropop New Age style with English vocals, reminiscent of Icelandic singer Björk. Some of the song titles include The Frozen World, Antarctic, Baby Penguins, Aurora Australis. All is White, Footprints in the Snow. Barclay 9827008. There is also a version of this disc with the English title MARCH OF THE EMPRESS (2005) Milan M2-36276; (See also MARCH OF THE PENGUINS Original Score by Alex Wurman (2005) in the preceding “Classical Antarctica” commentary.)

VOICES OF HISTORY 2 - Arts, Science & Exploration (2005)

In this second set of vocal recordings of famous people from the British Library Sound Archive, there is a 3.48 minute recitation by Ernest Shackleton titled A description of the dash for the South Pole, originally recorded on June 23, 1909 according to the liner notes. Another source has listed a recording date of March 30, 1910; however, this may be a release date. Shackleton very briefly outlines the British Antarctic (Nimrod) Expedition of 1907-09, which he led and which was the first to scale Mount Erebus and send men to the South Magnetic Pole. Shackleton and three others came within 112 miles of the South Pole itself, before conditions made them turn back. He ends with a quote from the Canadian northern poet, Robert Service. The recitation was originally recorded on Edison Amberol Record cylinder 473, reportedly later also released as Victor Record 55096B, Victor 70014 and Gramophone Co. D377. British Library NSACD 19-20; www.bl.uk/soundarchive

HIDDEN LANDSCAPE: LAKE VOSTOK by various artists (2004)

Eight Australian musicians have each contributed a track of ambient music in this disc dedicated to Antarctica’s largest subglacial lake. It is located under more than two miles of ice and believed to be up to 15 million years old. The water in the lake, from the melting of the underside of the ice sheet, may be up to one million years old. The dark toned music on the disc, while not a bubbly listening experience, captures well, the timeless and languid nature of water hidden over frozen eons of time. These would be great soundtracks for cinema. Track titles include some very descriptive themes: Silent Voices of the Extremophiles-Bright Steel Blind Waters, Under a Blue Sun, Atlantis Blueprints and Beneath the Lake-Subatomic Movements. The 72-minute CD was compiled by Australian ambient musician and promoter Zac Keiller and includes one of his own pieces, Beyond the Ice-Submergence-Exploration. He told us in 2008 that “I was watching a documentary on Lake Vostok one day and the idea of the lake inspired my imagination. I thought that the premise would lend itself to some fascinating sound pieces, and luckily it all worked out.” Dreamland Recordings (no record # given); www.dreamlandrecordings.com

LAKE VOSTOK by Sternenspringer (2004) (Web site download only)

Sternenspringer is the musical project of two Frankfurt, Germany-based ambient/techno electronic musicians, Jürgen Rieger and Gerd Neusser. This 23-minute, 4-track work, Lake Vostok, named for Antarctica’s mysterious subsurface lake, has the following description in the Web site: “icy textures and tricky rhythmic elements fill the range, that sternenspringer span in each track - a movie for the big screen in four aural scenes.” The duo told us in 2008 that “for the sternenspringer music we are looking always for a kind of topic. In this case we read an article in a newspaper (journal) and were fascinated about this natural phenomenon and decided to create some techno/electro tracks. We hope the music mirrored this unique natural spectacle.” Tonatom.038; www.tonatom.net; www.sternenspringer.de

BIRD SONGS IN THE ANTARCTIC INCLUDING SOUTH GEORGIA & FALKLAND ISLANDS (2004)

Recorded from the Explorer II, this 31-minute British CD has tracks of 24 birds and penguins recorded from the Antarctic Peninsula area, South Georgia, Falkland Islands and Ushuaia. Mandarin Productions MP CD5; www.mandarinproductions.com

MUSIC FROM CHRISTOPHER KULIKOWSKI’s RETROGADE by Stephen Melillo (2004)

Quickly shot in a short time with a low budget, this sci-fi film stars Dolph Lundgren. It’s about a group of scientists, travelling back from the future to the present time, who land on the Antarctic pack ice, where the polar research vessel, Nathaniel Palmer, is chasing a comet and has itself become trapped in the same ice. Throw in some deadly extraterrestrial bacteria and mutinous space travellers, and things are not looking good on board the ship. Unfortunately, the film has had no exposure in North America and may have limited distribution/availability on DVD. Although the CD package is bare bones with only a track listing, Stephen Mellilo’s entire score, including the track Antarctica, is suitably spooky and may be better than the film. Mellilo, an American conductor, educator and composer, has scored over 950 works for films, ensembles and symphonies and his work has been nominated for Academy and Emmy awards. Stormworks; www.cdbaby.com

ANTARCTINA by YNEY (2004)

This CD of instrumental tracks related to Antarctica was recorded in Moscow by a trio of established avant-garde Russian musicians (Yuri Orlov, Andrei Kireev & Igor Shaposhnikov). The bouncy, though repetitive, percussive electronic music has titles such as Appearance from Above, Stroll, Flight over the Continent, Fly Out, Return to Bosom and Light of the Antarctina Star. While the CD booklet is in Russian, the track titles are also listed in English. Electroshock Records ELCD 041; www.electroshock.ru

T & T’s REAL TRAVELS IN ANTARCTICA - Original Soundtrack Music composed and recorded by Thomas Downie (2004)

A 23-minute disc containing 12 themes with titles from numerous places along the Antarctic Peninsula, such as King George Island, Deception Island and Lemaire Channel. The short melodic orchestral sounding pieces are from T & T’s Antarctica DVD of a 2004 Peninsula trip on board the M/V Orlova. TTRT004; www.ttrealtravels.com

ALIEN VS. PREDATOR - Original Motion Picture Soundtrack, music by Harald Kloser (2004)

As much we always look forward to the very rare movie set in Antarctica, this one could have just as easily been based in a desert or in a jungle. The Antarctic became irrelevant to the theme of aliens fighting it out in a pyramid built deep in the ice by three ancient cultures. The eerie instrumental soundtrack music, similar to that of another spooky Antarctic movie, The Thing, contains a tune entitled Antarctica and likely the first and only musical track ever to be named Bouvetøya Island, the most isolated island on the planet, in the Southern Ocean. Varèse Sarabande 302 066 605 2; www.avp-movie.com

SEA OF GLORY America’s Voyage of Discovery - The U.S. Exploring Expedition 1838-1842 by Nathaniel Philbrick, read by Dennis Boutsikaris (2003)

While CD audio books are otherwise not being listed in this music Discography, this 5-CD, 6-hour package is the exception, and is a superb invitation/teaser for reading the book by Philbrick. According to the cover notes, “The U.S. Exploring Expedition of 1838-1842 was one of the most ambitious undertakings of the nineteenth century. They discovered a new southern continent, which Wilkes would name Antarctica. They were the first Americans to reach the treacherous Columbia River; the first to chart dozens of newly discovered islands all across the Pacific. The story pivots around Charles Wilkes – a self-destructive dynamo who undermined his own prodigious feats by alienating his crew and officers, fighting battles with his sponsors, and jealously guarding what should have been a proud national legacy.”

Polar historian Laurence Kirwan described the U.S. Ex Ex as the worst prepared and most controversial expedition to sail the Antarctic seas (ref. Lonely Planet Antarctica). Although Antarctic exploration was only part of its mandate, it managed to follow 1250 miles of East Antarctic coastline, later known as Terre Adélie and Wilkes Land, making, arguably, the first east continental sighting just days before the French Expedition under Dumont d’Urville. CDs 2 & 3 cover the voyages to the South Shetland Islands and along the Adélie Coast, respectively. Penguin Audiobooks 80023-6; www.penguin.com; (See also FAIR WINDS AND A FOLLOWING SEA by The Boarding Party (2003) - The Old Peacock - in the following “Individual Antarctic songs” commentary.)

ANTARCTIC MOSAIC by Maurizio Bianchi (2003)

Italian composer of sonic dissonance, Bianchi has produced a 74-minute two-part collage and pastiche of electronic sounds and noises. According to the English translation of his Italian liner notes, “Being eager for immaculate spaces and for spheres of pure sentiment, I felt need to take inspiration from the so-called “frozen continent”, the unique place in which the human presence doesn’t completely contaminate the habitat yet. The hostile surroundings and the prohibitive temperatures rendered possible the perpetuation of the most uncontaminated and stimulating “frozen paradise”. Yes, this is the most appropriate term as probably, in the beginning, Antarctica was an immense park or paradise; but after the post-Flood upsetting events (from the autumn of 2370 BC onwards), when unexpectedly and suddenly the temperatures fell many centigrade degrees, all at once this continent became cold, turning into the present Antarctica. All of this is well emphasized in the first track called “Antarctic”, while in the second one, “Mosaic”, the listener’s mind is projected into the immediate future, when, after the decontamination process of human presence on the Earth, the temperatures will return milder. Maybe even the ex-“frozen continent” will be colonized in a peaceful and rational manner by the “New Earth’s” members, a new human society which will transform the whole planet into a wonderful Paradise, to eternal glory of He Who from the beginning proposed that this is how it must be. To all of you, current members of that future “New Earth”, a warm and enthusiastic “Have a good listening!” EEs’T Records 15MB015

VOSTOK by Craig Padilla (2002)

Padilla is a northern California-based electronic musician and performer with a preference for older analog synthesizers. Vostok is a relaxing, 51-minute single-track ambient instrumental. As with Antarctica, nothing much changes for long stretches of time, but also nothing stays the same. According to the liner notes, “Inspired by the mysterious depths of the hidden lake under Antarctica, VOSTOK is a haunting voyage into an unknown space filled with wonder and awe. Padilla masterfully crafts a subterranean soundworld, transforming electronic instruments into subtle abstract beauty that feels no less organic than inorganic, in this visionary longform ambient work.” Padilla’s own liner notes describe it as “music realized in contemplation of the inner stillness reflected by a distant, sub-glacial lake beneath Antarctica. Jewel-like and crystalline, yet dark, cool, and ancient the muse of Lake Vostok flowed through me like a resonant glacier. Now this unique, vibrant soundscape flows to you. I hope that you find the vision and sonic space as riveting and transforming as I have. Peace.”

Craig told us in 2007 that “I hope you are enjoying the musical atmosphere. I remember when I recorded that piece: I had just read a fascinating article in WIRED Magazine about how satellites had discovered an unknown lake underneath a lot of ice. According to the article, once it was discovered, scientists theorized that the hidden lake may contain many keys to the origins of life since the water was uncontaminated by our atmosphere for millions of years! So, they began to drill a hole down to the water when they suddenly realized that by doing so they’d expose the lake to our atmosphere, and so they stopped the drilling by a few meters of hitting the water!

It was a very interesting story, to say the least! (Also during that time, I had been listening to some long-form ambient music that was nice, but not too terribly interesting from a musical/long song stand-point.) So, a day or so later, I went into the recording studio to create a long-form ambient piece that could be heard during sleep, but it also had to hold the interest of the listener. In other words, I didn’t want to create “wallpaper ambient music”. I wanted to make music that wasn’t distracting so somebody could study or sleep with it on in the background, and at the same time it had to be interesting so that somebody could sit down and just listen to it from beginning to end and enjoy the experience (and I think I was quite successful!)

I recorded the track live in one take! The light wind sounds and heavy slow-moving “glacial bass lines” made me think of the article I had just read; and the rest is history! This track was unlike anything I was recording at the time, but I really enjoyed it and still do! (And thankfully, so does my wife!)” Spotted Peccary Music SPM-1401; www.craigpadilla.com

ANTARCTICA REVISITED by Mr. I, Gary Huntbatch and Anise Abdulla (2002)

British Columbia-based teacher and musician-entertainer Mr I. (Yurgen Ilaender) has produced many CDs about geography and science for kids. He told us, “I have worked in Montessori pre-schools for nearly twenty years now. Antarctica is a popular Montessori theme. The children can study an environment not spoiled by man. Lots of wonderful things happen in the classroom. The songs came from several years of teaching the young children about Antarctica.” The CD includes 17 tracks with titles such as Land So Far Away, Antarctica Song, Seals, McMurdo Station, Food Chain, Crusty Krill and An Ice Rap. The CD was completely redone is 2007 and reissued in 2008 with new vocals and instrumental tracks under the title of ANTARCTICA. ANT-6 and ANT-7; www.childmusicmri.com

ELEPHANT ISLAND by Adam Schabtach (2002)

There is an eye-catching cover photo of the bleak ice-coated island of Shackleton’s legendary 1914-16 Endurance Expedition, taken by a retired Rear Admiral of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The musical content comprises a single 66-minute synthesizer piece composed and recorded in a continuous improvisation. It’s pretty much just a long drawn out monotonic ambient dirge - not an awful lot going on there, which in its way may well be echoing the survival routine of much of the Expedition. ATOM CD 17; www.atomiccity.com

TIME TRAVEL IS LONELY by John Vanderslice (2001)

Vanderslice is a San Francisco-based indie folk-rock artist/story teller and producer. His second CD is a concept album about his apparently fictional brother, who is a snow-trapped programmer at an Antarctic geology field camp. The nine diary entries in the liner notes reveal the mental decline of the brother, particularly after he loses his computer’s E-mail connection and hard drive to a virus. The songs, while not Antarctic in content, echo this state of regression, which ends with visions of Tiananmen Square and the sinking of the Kursk submarine. At first, the diarist is lucid: “I am not going to say it’s cold here, and I won’t tell you about the vast, infinite emptiness that draws every sad lonely feeling out of your breathless soul and drops it on the bluish snow, right at your polypropylene boots.” Later on, his mind wanders: “I am going crazy. I crawl out of my hut to scrape my windows, I can’t bear to be stuck in a white frosted box with nothing but the shortwave. The sun crests up around 9 pm and fades after an hour or so. Have I told you about whiteouts? USGS survival manual: a polar hazard where all horizon definition between land and sky, solid ground & coast, vanishes. We are in a whiteout. A little girl has been coming by at night, she lives at McMurdo Base, (which seems far) but she comes to talk she tells me my station is an ECHELON relay base. I need to look into this. She said I should smash it up! Ahh youth. I need to talk to you soon.” The CD cover has a striking but spooky drawing of a blue, black, white ocean frozen ocean scene with reddish sky with a silhouetted Endurance crushed in the ice. The CD itself is embossed with a crevassed modern van superimposed over the wreck of the Endurance. Barsuk Records bark17; www.johnvanderslice.com

WHALE CHASING MEN - Songs of Whaling in Ice and Sun by Harry Robertson (2001)

Harry Robertson (1923-1995) was a native Glaswegian who immigrated to Australia in 1952, worked during 1950-51 as an engineer with the Norwegian whaling fleet in the Antarctic and wintered over at South Georgia. He became a seminal influence in the Australian folk movement of the 1960s and made the above-titled LP in 1971. Through the efforts of his widow and friends, the LP was released on CD in 2001 by Australia’s National Screen & Sound Archive as its first folk reissue. Through spoken introductions and instrumental accompaniments, the songs and chanteys mince no words about the gruesome, hard scenes of the whaling experience and Antarctic references abound. The lyrics of the Antarctic track, The Antarctic Fleet, are:

“I went down south a-whaling, to the land of ice and snow, And eight-and-twenty pounds a month, was all I had to show, For being on a little ship like sardine in a can, And eating salty pork and beef, they stewed up in a pan.

Chorus: Heigh-ho! Whale-oh, Wi’ the Antarctic fleet, I’ve got a drip upon me nose and I’m frozen in the feet.
South Georgia is an island, it is a Whaling Base, And only men in search of whales, would go to such a place, No entertainment does exist unless you make home brew, Then we would have some singing and, we’d have some fighting too.

Our gunner came from Norway, like many of the crew, And others spoke wi’ Scottish tongues, as Whalers often do, But when the ship was closing in to make the bloody kill, The Scotsmen and Norwegians worked together with a will.

We sailed down to the Weddell Sea where the big Blues can be found, We chased between the icebergs and, we chased them round and round, And when they couldn’t run no more, and fought to draw their breath, Our gunners shot harpoons in them, till they floated still in death.

For months we sailed the ocean, and wearied with the toil, Of slaughter and of killing just to get that smelly oil, And when the savage storms blew and snow kept falling down, I often wished that I was back, in dear old Glasgow town.

It’s twenty years since I’ve been there, and I won’t go there again, I didn’t like the climate but, I liked the Whaling Men, And even in the sunshine now, when I walk along the street, I’ve got a drip upon me nose, and I’ve still got frozen feet.” ScreenSound Australia CD/SSA/WC0022; www.nfsa.afc.gov.au; (See also FOLKLORIC RECORDING: Folk Songs Sung by Harry Robertson and Don Henderson (1967) in the “Individual Songs” category below.)

THE ICESTOCK 2001 PROJECT (2001)

The first music compilation disc from Antarctica includes live performances at the Coffee House and the Women’s Soirée at the U.S. McMurdo Station. Organized by G.W. Krauss, the project was a labour of love, undertaken and completed by volunteers. While the cold weather and dry air may cause numb fingers and warped musical instruments, Icestock has now become an annual musical festival on New Year’s Day. The inaugural CD manages to cover a lot of ground, or should we say, icy terrain, through various styles over the 24 tracks. Information available at: kuwona@bigfoot.com

BLUE SUBMARINE NO. 6 - AONOROKUGO - Original Soundtrack by the Thrill (2000)

Originally the name of a Japanese manga print comic book series, Blue Submarine No. 6 became a four part video animation TV program in 1998 and was reported to be in planning for a live-action movie. Based in the near future when the oceans have flooded most of the earth’s coastlines, the series’ villain/ rogue scientist has a base of operations at the South Pole and is trying to induce a polar switch with the aid of the South Pole’s geothermal energy, in order to teach his brand of humanity to mankind. War later ensues on Antarctica, with the good guys on Blue Submarine No. 6, part of a peacekeeping force, leading the way to confront the enemy. Antarctica, meanwhile, has been transformed into the tropics. The series finally ends with the pole shift stopped and an uneasy truce for the sake of humanity. Japanese big band/rock group the Thrill, formed in 1990, provides some very energetic music for the series. Toshiba-EMI Futureland TYVY-10036; www.thethrill.info

PENGUINS ON THE MOON by Sack Trick (2000)

The British Sack Trick is a revolving group of comedic musicians, in the vein of the late 1960s Bonzo Dog Band. This CD is a heavy metal/music hall/rock musical about a group of penguins in Antarctica who take a spaceship to the moon. However, the moon is not the tropical paradise they imagined and tiring of moon dust cheese and anxious for a meal of fish, “our intrepid explorers returned to the only place they ever truly called home, having proved themselves to be real lunar chicks.” An entertaining and well played musical trip, with illustrated cartoon lyrics, from a group of crazies. ORG 212; www.sacktrick.fsnet.co.uk; www.organart.com

VOYAGE OF DISCOVERY Dedicated To The Memory Of Robert Falcon Scott by D. E. Farmer/Soulspace Music (2000)

Arizona-based composer and musician Farmer has recently issued this CD of contemporary, romantic instrumental synthesizer music as his score to an imagined movie about Scott's 1911-12 tragic South Pole journey. “What a marvellous story, and what a testament to the indomitable human spirit! I hope that the music somehow can act as a memorial of sorts to Robert and Kathleen Scott.” The 11 tracks include titles such as Entering the Ice Pack, Winter at McMurdo Sound, Tea at Mabel Beardsley's, Beat the Norwegians: The Race is On!, Arrival at the South Pole: January 1912, Kathleen Scott's Theme. mp3.com 39391 and 167618; www.soundclic.com

WHITE OUT by Johannes Schmoelling (2000)

Schmoelling is a former member of Tangerine Dream, an internationally successful German recording and touring synthesizer/electronic music group formed in the late 1960s. The current CD is a remixed and expanded version of the 1990 original. The 10 melodic instrumental tracks include titles such as White Out, Navigator’s Chatter, Icewalk, A Great Continent, A long Way Home. In his web site, Schmoelling explains his idealistic intuition that electronic music can create a spacious open landscape via the detour of the Antarctic.

“The sounds that I have used and changed will in no way deny their origin. They are noises; the sound of a sonar, the crackling and squeaking of radio sets, machines, the far-away screeching of birds – and if we close our eyes, then with each noise we immediately connect to some image of a landscape or surroundings. For me, this was a reason to compose entire noise passages – a kind of foundation out of which the music actually is born.

In a scientific book on the Antarctic, I read of an optical phenomenon, which occurs under certain conditions of temperature and of the air: WHITE OUT. It is a loss of space sensation. The white erases space, sky and earth flow into each other, a space without depth and without horizon is created.

Maybe a concept album is nothing else but a voyage, a departure to another place, which slowly uncovers itself, a shore that comes closer and piles up as a mountain of ice. Arrival, first announced over the radio, the whirr of machine noises, entertainment music filling up the crewmen’s room.

Suddenly (where on the map appeared just an immense white spot), there is firm ground under your feet and you see: garbage, food throwouts, tin cans, as if to be preserved for eternity, discarded oil residue and a tire rut leading to the horizon, where an industrial complex arises, and then unconsciously, the feeling that here, at the very end of the world, a war announces itself, that the machines are already in position, that the fronts are lined up, and when you look around, there is the oldest landscape in the world (a war with the purpose of eradicating the history of nature: WHITE OUT.)

As I finalized the work on the album, Reinhold Messner and Arved Fuchs departed for the Antarctic. Not like before (as was still done in the last century) to remove the white spots from the map nor with the aim (as at the turn of the century) to hoist the flag of every which country, but solely because of the landscape itself, purely because of its being such and nothing else (at the present time).

And I thought that as a child, even in my wildest dreams, it never occurred to me that just taking a walk could one day become a political act.” Viktoriapark VP 00-1; www.johannesschmoelling.de

A DISTANT MEMORY OF HOME - Music for Adelie Penguin 1993:207 by 90º South (2000)

This CD is a solo project of Briton Kev Fox, who explains in his web site: “The three titles on ‘A Distant Memory of Home’ were composed specifically for an event that took place in June 2000. Adelie Penguin 1993:207 is now a permanent exhibit in Cheltenham Museum as an interesting piece of Antarctic history. It was brought to England as a stuffed specimen by Edward Wilson, returning from his first Antarctic Expedition in 1904, but for many years he stood on a window ledge in Shurdington Village School. He was donated by the Wilson family, as a memento of the local hero, when he failed to return from the fatal attempt on the South Pole with Captain Scott in 1912.

Between June 2nd and June 4th 2000 the Penguin revisited the Village for a weekend of celebrations and over the three days I performed the tracks on ‘A Distant Memory of Home’ under the watchful eye of the penguin himself, in the 14th century village church.

Intending to portray a longing for the far-off icy wilderness of Antarctica the title piece was recorded live on Saturday 3rd June. The two remaining tracks were written to represent the penguin in his element (On the Ice Floe) and in his display case (In the Museum Case) and were recorded live in Jaguar Sound Studios, using only sources and themes from the title track.

The three pieces move through the freezing winds and seas of the South Polar regions and as the memories fade into the dusty solitude of a glass case, the sounds of the white continent still echoing in the distance.”

AAR002; www.ochre.co.uk/90south

THE BARRIER SILENCE by 90º South (1999)

The CD title was taken from Dr. Edward Wilson’s poem of the same name, written during Scott’s Terra Nova South Pole Antarctic Expedition of 1910-13. The CD was recorded in a studio at Cheltenham, U.K., home of Dr. Wilson and has as its cover a Wilson painting of Hut Point, headquarters of Scott’s first Antarctic Expedition of 1901-04. The back cover has a photo of one of the motor sledges used on the Terra Nova Expedition. A final Antarctic reference is included in the liner notes with a photo of Admiral Byrd’s airplane, Floyd Bennett, landing at his base, Little America at the Bay of Whales. The two instrumental Antarctic tracks on the CD include Hut Point and Cape Crozier, the latter a reference to the destination of the 1911 mid-winter polar journey described by Apsley Cherry-Garrard in his famous book, The Worst Journey in the World. The music, by Kev Fox, is a guitar/synthesizer/percussion-based ambient sound. Ochre Records OCH014LCD; www.ochre.co.uk/90south

ANTARTICA by Gale Revilla (1999)

Gale Revilla is a prolific Nevada-based composer and synthesizer artist with over 20 spiritual New Age CDs in her catalogue. This one includes titles such as Horizons, Crystal Storms, The Lost City, Ice Goddess, Antartica, Aurora Australis, Adelie Coast and Leviathan Temple. Her assistant informed us that “Gale had studied about Ancient Civilizations from many books for decades. One of her favorite topics was Atlantis and the Ancient land of Lemuria. Those were the foundations that motivated her to compose the ‘Antartica’, ‘Lost Continents’ and the ‘Mystic Lands’ albums. Another of her favorites in Ancient Civilizations and Empires was, Ancient Egypt. This brought on her motivation to compose her award winning album Series, ‘Pharaohs’. Another album that deals with the Dark Age Empires and Dragons is her album, ‘Draconis’. Her Native American albums deal with her ancestors and their dying ancient language. So three were composed in dedication to her ancestors of centuries past: ‘Day of the Wolf’, ‘Liquid Visions’ and ‘Whispering Winds on the Red Road.’” Morning Star Records; www.galerevilla.com

ANTARCTICA SUITE by Wendy Mae Chambers (1999)

Wendy Mae Chambers is a New Jersey-based musician who visited the Antarctic Peninsula in 1999 as a tourist and subsequently recorded a CD of piano solo compositions inspired by her trip. The 13 instrumental tracks, which Wendy Mae said were modelled after Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, include titles descriptive of the wildlife and sights she saw, such as Blue Ice, Penguin Rookery, Albatross, Waltz of the Krill, Chinstrap Penguins, Humpback Whales, Weddell Seals and Skua. The chiming chordal and percussive sounds of her piano are very evocative of the various images she sets out to portray. www.wendymae.com

ANTARCTIC ARRIVAL - a Tribute to a Frozen Land by Valmar Kurol and Marc-André Bourbonnais (1999)

This Montreal-produced CD contains ten thematic instrumental pieces in New Age/light rock/classical styles, based on Kurol’s three visits to Antarctica in the 1990s. Titles include Antarctic Arrival, Never Mind the Icebergs, Flight of the Albatross, Antarctica World Beat Theme, Underwater Waltz, Penguin Stroll, Seekers of the Pole, Aurora Australis, March of the Glaciers, White Winter Curtain. There are also bonus tracks with vocal renditions of two of the instrumentals. The CD is available from mtl.ant.soc@sympatico.ca or www.antarcticarrival.com

ANTARCTICA by Douglas Quin (1998)

This is a CD of natural sounds from the field produced by Douglas Quin for the Wild Sanctuary series of wildlife recordings. Stereo/surround microphones were used to record Weddell and leopard seals, orcas, and emperor and Adélie penguins. Of special note are the creaks and groans heard from the Canada Glacier and Wind Harps from the Taylor Valley. The liner notes say that “To create this kind of magic with natural sound takes time, enormous patience, perseverance, and a keen compositional sense to make lyrical the material heard on this album. Sounds from the Antarctic present the ultimate test.” Miramar 09006-23113-2

ANTARCTIC by Mónica X (1998) (Vinyl LP only)

Mónica X is a veteran Spanish DJ and music promoter/performer who has garnered European and international success with her touring. This is one of her earliest singles records and has the three tracks, Antarctic, No Frost (Extreme Cold Version) and Antarctic Melody. Beginning with frosty winds and chants of “cold”, the electronic disco music is surprisingly subdued for the genre. The record cover has a catchy purple/blue hue with a photo of icebergs, overseen by a pair of staring, icy eyes. Monica X told us in 2008 that the reason for the Antarctic record was that “this place is so far from Spain and we thought about this concept one summer with hot weather, so we did it to refresh our lives.” Dixland Records MX DIX 012; www.djmonicax.com

TRAVELLERS TALES FROM ANTARCTICA by David & Phil Massey (1998/1996)

This British CD of instrumental synthesizer New Age music is part of a collection of Relaxation, Ambient and World Music. The liner notes explain: “Perhaps the most awe inspiring region on earth – Antarctica. Her beauty, mystery, and presence has called to adventurers for eons and yet she still remains the most unexplored continent on or planet. This spiritually expansive Travellers Tale will unfold visions of space, grandeur and virgin beauty through a magnificent season of superb musical observation.” Some of the track titles include, Ice Bergs, Vinson Massif, Alone at the Pole, Glacier, Penguin, The Coldest Place on Earth. Northstar Music NSMCD 146; www.northstarmusic.co.uk

ANTARTIDA by John Cale (1995)

This is a musical soundtrack to a Spanish-American film by Manuel Huerga, not so much about Antarctica as a place but rather, as a state of mind. Cale is a former member of the rock group Velvet Underground. The music consists of short, sparse, haunting, melodic themes - Antarctica seems perfectly suited to be a source of inspiration for minimalist composition. Les Diques du Crépuscule TWI-1008

The theme song for this soundtrack has its origin in a Cale song, Antarctica Starts Here found on his 1973 solo recording PARIS 1919. Reprise/Warner Bros. Records Inc. 2131-2

A newer version of this song is also found on Cale’s PARIS S’EVEILLE (1992), a collection of his soundtracks and music for ballet. MASO CD 90042

The same song, Antarctica Starts Here, was covered in a 1992 mini CD, CANDY ON THE CROSS, by David J. MCA Records MCADM-54424

ANTARCTICA by Ian Tamblyn (1994)

Tamblyn is an Ottawa-area Canadian pop-folk artist and currently an Arctic tour lecturer. This recording is associated with the CBC radio documentary, Notes from the Bottom of the World, based on his trip to McMurdo Sound. The instrumental music is a combination of New Age/folk-rock/jazz influences played with crystalline, vibrant instrumentation, at times including penguin brays and Weddell seal squeals. Titles include The Weddell Planet, Erebus Ice Caves, Out on the Ice Fields, Ed’s Still Diving. One especially memorable song is The Penguin came from Pittsburgh. Attractive emperor penguin cover picture. North Track Records NTCD3. In the U.S. this CD is available as NorthSound NSCD 29532; www.tamblyn.com

ANTARCTICA by Richie Beirach (recorded 1985, issued 1994)

Beirach is an American jazz artist who improvises on elements of eclectic modern music. This solo piano Antarctica Suite, according to the liner notes, “unlike the musical pablum that assaults us daily, isn’t programmed to make you consume or conform. Only feel.” Titles include The Ice Shelf, Deception Island, and Neptune's Bellows. ECD 22086-2

ANTARCTICA - The Last Wilderness by Medwyn Goodall (1993)

Goodall, who lives in Cornwall, England, has recorded many CDs for the Dutch New Age music label, Oreade Music. It’s a pleasure to hear one of the few all-Antarctic CDs we have come across. There are six extended synthesizer and other instrumental pieces with titles such as All White, Endless Emptiness and Snow Kingdom Forever. Dreamy, peaceful music and gentle to the ears but we’re not entirely convinced we've been transported to Antarctica through the music. Mar 3812

POLAR SHIFT - A Benefit for Antarctica by various artists (1991)

A compilation of New Age instrumental and vocal music dedicated to the conservation of Antarctica. Performers include a number of single-name artists such as Vangelis, Yanni, Enya and Kitaro, along with ET's John Tesh. A very enjoyable, soothing palette of sounds. Informative liner notes give references for further reading though some of the addresses are now out of date. Private Music BMG2083-2-P

DEVOTION - THE BEST OF YANNI by Yanni (1997)

The instrumental Song for Antarctica, specially recorded for the previously-mentioned Polar Shift CD, is also found on several of Yanni's discs, including this hits compilation. Private Music 01005-82153-2

NUNATAK GONGAMUR by Thomas Köner (1990)

Köner is an internationally active award-winning German audio-visual media artist/electronic composer. His first CD, out of print and unavailable commercially, was an ambient collection of 11 untitled pieces that were based on Robert Scott’s tragic South Pole Expedition of 1911-12. The CD cover has an old photo of a sledge team with their dogs and ponies and a copy of a few of Scott’s last written words. According to reviewer Ned Raggett in the Web-based All Music Guide, “Köner's composition falls somewhere between a requiem for the loss and waste of the expedition and a haunting, extremely inhuman evocation of the endless snow and ice fields of Antarctica that the core members of the expedition struggled through and died in. The swathes of deep echo and occasional crumbling rhythm create an aura of paranoid fascination, at once weirdly soothing and increasing the nervous tension every chance it gets. When Köner adds variety to the music, the effect can almost be shocking - consider the sudden distorted whines on the third and fifth tracks, which with its slight echo treatment and the rumbling background moans could almost be a disturbing cry for help. Other times, tones barely lurk in the mix, only on the edge of hearing, like being caught in an endless cavern where something curious hides in the dim distance. The killer touch is the use of space throughout the album - silences of various lengths maintaining the air of mysterious threat.” This is a powerful description of music that consists of electronically treated gongs and cymbals, but the CD is a captivating soundtrack for desolation. BAR 002; www.koener.de; www.thomaskoner.com

ANTARCTICA by Vangelis (1983)

Synthesizer music from Koreyoshi Kurahara’s film of the same name. It told the story of the 1958 first Japanese Antarctic Expedition, which ended up stranding a pack of 15 sled dogs on the continent over a winter season. Best song is the title track, Theme from Antarctica, which still remains the definitive Antarctic mood music. Nothing else from the eight tracks on the disc matches this magnificent throbbing and pulsating piece which is the perfect accompaniment for sailing down the pristine Lemaire Channel or Gerlache Strait. Many amateur videos of the Antarctic have probably borrowed this theme for background music. Polygram/Polydor 815732-2. The original Japanese issue of the CD (Polydor 3112-22) has the classic photo of two dogs on the cover while newer issues have small silver or blue outlines of Antarctica. A rare and pricey limited-edition promo CD that may occasionally appear for sale on Web auction sites contains the full score of 24 tracks. These include further variations of the main theme, as well as shorter soundscape interludes and a few longer pieces.

THE THING by Ennio Morricone (1982)

The soundtrack to the popular Antarctic sci-fi movie of the same name. Morricone has composed many highly regarded film themes but this electronic noodling, appropriate in the film, is less interesting as stand-alone CD music. Varèse Sarabande VSD-5278

IO SONO MURPLE by Murple (Vinyl LP - 1974) (CD reissues - 1992 & 2002)

Italian prog-rock group Murple’s only recording (I am Murple) was a concept album of largely keyboard-led instrumentals, with a few vocal tracks, that tells the tale of an Antarctic penguin who leaves home looking for paradise and winds up, apparently happily, in a zoo. The colourful CD booklet features drawings of icebergs and a mass of penguins. Mellow Records MMP 121 (1992 reissue) and Akarma AK 1035 (2002 reissue); www.murple.it

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Individual songs entitled Antarctica or about The Ice also appear on the following commercially or privately available discs. The styles range from New Age to thrash/heavy metal:

UTOPIA DELETED by Trimetrick (2008)

This Antwerp, Belgium-based industrial electronic music duo, consisting of Catherine Jane Robinson and Michael Mampaey, describes itself as a “non-profit freeware audio music project.” Their current CD has the spooky, arpeggiated and propulsive track Antarctica. Lyrics: “Frozen in, I’m left behind, I’m the origin, taken from you. Strapped in the back of your mind, For in here I am, Hiding the truth. Aeons of sleep in the ice, For desiring is, My will seeping through. Fallen I am, For the idle, And I might be, Looking for you. You drew down my borders, Set foot on my shore. You drilled in my layers, Walked up to my core. No place for disorder, Survival and nothing more. No God for your prayers, Too cold for a throne. For history’s waves I am blind, No loss within, My icing so blue.” Michael told us that “I always wanted to make a song about this fascinating continent, so I started to create a sound base with cold, harsh synths and rhythmic layers. The lyrics are written as if it were a person that is given voice. In the booklet of the CD, the lyrics are written on a satellite photo of this huge glacier of Antarctica. I dedicated the song to my grandfather; it was played at his funeral.” Sex Elite Recordings SER001; www.trimetrick.be

THE HOUSE OF ILL REPUTE by Mary Coughlan (2008)

An Irish music veteran with 14 albums, this one is a forceful musical and emotional epic that follows the end of a long personal relationship. With musical styles ranging from music hall to heavier folk/rock, the songs cover the psyche from bitterness to almost a celebration of losing one’s way. Included is the dirge-like track Antarctica, which may be the one of the bleakest personal references in this discography to the coldest of continents. Lyrics: “My heart is in Antarctica, Ice water chills my veins, My disembodied voice calls you, A hundred thousand names. You lying bastard, whoring fraud, you rotten stinking cheat, I thought you were my haven, Now I drown in your deceit. I’m cast adrift to wander, Through the memories of that life, Recalling a game, In which I was your wife. Now I am tossed and battered, By the Katabic wind, And constantly reminded, You’re no more my next of kin. My heart it is Antarctica, So deep beneath the snow, And under miles of crushing white, Where no mortal man can go. Beating once in every year, Sending shock waves through the ice, An occasional reminder, Of my suspended life. And in the still of evening, Of an everlasting day, A parade of icebergs goes on its way. And as I gaze upon them, They retreat into the blue, And paint a pretty picture, I no longer think of you.” Rubyworks RWXCD69; www.marycoughlan.com; www.myspace.com/marycoughlanmusic

CRYOGENIC CLEANSING// FOUR ELABORATIONS OF COLD by Orb of Torture (2008)

The Brussels, Belgium-based death metal band has included the track Antarctic Frequency Catharsis on its debut 4-track extended play CD. Sample heavyweight lyrics hint of uncontrollable gale forces to thoughts of muon particle physics: “Thunderous low-frequency arguing, only to prevent unconscionable deeds, ventilate to prevent, unbearable stress must be released in throe sonancy, how powerful must it be, enough to free stuck souls, enough to touch, antarctic frequency catharsis. transforming sounds into matter, into actual deeds, surrendering feeling catches you and dissects your troubles, crystal clear solution that was always there… now makes sense to you, antarctic frequency catharsis. let the sound waves throb and you may try to sieve, fail you will, you never felt intense powers like these, sandblasting feeling only created with infiltrating frequencies, it will cleanse your soul, sanding the filth, sanding useless…it will cleanse your soul, sanding the filth, sanding useless memories. small movement with an immense force, sent out to clear you from all the stress particles, bound with your karma, sounds reprogram your soul. fluffy small particles, enter they will, decompress your thoughts, distress you, travel through anything, leave nothing unchanged. why would you persist through a heavenly rite such as this? maybe it’s unknown to you, hard to comply with standard thinking, that doesn’t mean it’s wrong, let the sound kiss you. let the sound waves throb and you may try to sieve, fail you will, you never felt intense powers like these antarctic feelings.” We asked Tristan Van Dorsselaer, the band’s guitarist, about the reason for the track. He told us that “the lyrics of that song are about ‘cold’ emotions and the releasing effect they can have on a person. We tried to bring a cold vastness in our music for this CD and the Antarctic theme fitted that quite well.” www.myspace.com/orbof torture

OVERFLOW by Tom Prayne (2008)

Prayne is a Hamburg, Germany-based electronica artist. His CD of instrumentals contains the gurgling, throbbing bass-heavy synthesizer/guitar track Antarctica. www.myspace.com/tomprayne

7 CONTINENTS – Global Jams by Maurice Gainen (2008)

Maurice Gainen is a multi-faceted Los Angeles, U.S.A.-based jazz musician, producer and arranger with his own studio. In particular, he has worked for 12 years as music director, performer and sound engineer with the Hues Corporation, who had a #1 hit in the 1970s and who appear on one of the tracks on this CD. The music here represents a journey to the continents and is played and sung by various musicians from their homelands, in collaboration with Maurice on a variety of flutes and saxophones. The continent of Antarctica is represented by Antarctic Sunrise, a track with Maurice’s tranquil flute melody superimposed over real recorded sounds of penguins, skuas, seals, cracking glaciers and winds. The natural soundscapes were recorded by Douglas Quin, who has spent many seasons in Antarctica. Empyrean EM-754-5; www.mauricegainen.com; (See also ANTARCTICA by Douglas Quin (1998) in the above “Non-Classical, all or significantly Antarctic” commentary.)

KILLING THE PAST by Knockout Theory (2008)

Up and coming New Jersey, U.SA.-based Knockout Theory is an accomplished young punk band with unbounded energy and melodic hooks. Their debut CD includes the track Miss Antarctica. Sample lyrics: “I’m the best of the best but my social life’s a wreck, I got a Ph.D. in cosmetology and I’m about to crack from the stress. I see fifty beauty queens on the screen and I’m really quite perplexed cause I’m throwing up twenty-four-seven and I still don’t look like that…I said, ‘I wanna be, I wanna be Miss Antarctica’...I could want world peace, I wanna be Miss America, sorry, ‘Antarctica’…” We asked Brian Strelko, vocalist/ bassist about the unusual Antarctic references. The gracious punker and social critic told us, “Firstly, I’m sorry if you accidentally purchased our CD for the sole reason that the track might be actually about Antarctica! The motivation for the track’s title stems from how outrageous and degrading beauty pageants like ‘Miss America’ really are, so much that they might as well be named ‘Miss Antarctica’ for their obscurity. Also, I believe the phrase ‘Miss Antarctica’ was used in a commercial from the 90s in which John O’Hurley sings for a penguin walking down a runway.” Antarctica – beauty pageants – runways – sounds like a great Antarctic cultural theme worthy of further field research! www.knockouttheory.com; www.myspace.com/knockouttheory

DAN-O Guitar, Lyrics and Cutups by Dan O’Connor (2008)

Dan O’Connor is a New York City-based singer/songwriter who has performed in the Northeast U.S., following educational degrees in Music and Music Business. His debut CD of various rock & pop songs includes the track Antarctic Moon, a bluesy song about a “voodoo girl cooking soup in a broth of hearts… And her potions came over me like the sea, Under an Antarctic Moon. Yeah that voodoo girl was blind, But she could see right through me every time.” Since Antarctica and voodoo are unusual pairings, we asked Dan about it and he said, “it’s about the stories of ‘voodoo’ death brought on by supernatural powers in New Zealand and how maybe it’s more than coincidence that the tides in the Ross Sea are one of the few places in the world that have no relationship to the Moon and the tide can even vanish.” www.danosongs.com

SECRETS OF THE NEW EXPLORERS by Glen Phillips (2008)

Glen Phillips is a Santa Barbara, California-based veteran musician and a founder, in the late 1980s, of the alternative rock band Toad the Wet Sprocket, which found commercial success with two platinum CDs and movie soundtracks and TV programs that included their songs. Since 1998, Glen has recorded and performed in a solo career as well as in periodic reunions of the band. The present six-track concept EP, inspired by private space travel, includes the cryptic, melodic track The Spirit of Shackleton, which hints at Shackleton as space explorer. We asked Glen about the background for the track and he told us, “I love the story of Shackleton and the Endurance. In my song, the spacecraft is named The Spirit of Shackleton. Unfortunately, my small crew seems to have had a few issues with either manslaughter or murder (I’m not entirely sure, as I wasn’t there and there were no 3rd party accounts of what took place), which is entirely un-Shackleton in its nature, aside from extreme cold and a very remote location.” The lyrics are: “This is no exaggeration, I truly am alone a hundred million clicks and eight long months from home.
But I’m holding to my promise, I’ll land and plant the flag for God and corporation and the greater good of man. There’s no law that can touch me, my sins are mine to keep, I’m a rocket, I’m an island and on my shore she sleeps. I’m not coming back from here, I’ve been too far now, I’m cold but I’m not scared, in the Spirit of Shackleton. Pretty droplets of crimson surround me as they drift, bonding together or bursting into mist, so I open up my mouth to them and offer out my tongue. They are salty and sweet like the memory of love. I’m not coming back from here, I’ve been too far, I’m cold but I’m not scared and I’m unshackled. I’m not coming back from here, I’ve been too far, I’m cold but I’m not scared in the Spirit of Shackleton.” Umami Music; www.glenphillips.com; www.myspace.com/glenphillips

THE NAVY LARK Series Four Volume 2 (2008)

The Navy Lark, the longest running comedy program in British radio history, was a concoction about the antics of the crew of HMS Troutbridge, on the BBC airwaves from March 1959 to July 1977 with 15 series. This box set of six CDs from Dec. 1961 to March 1962 includes the bonus item Calling the Antarctic, recorded on Dec. 4, 1962 and broadcast on Dec. 25 1962. This was a special Christmas Overseas Service Broadcast for their “frozen friends” in the Antarctic, the 85 members of the British Antarctic Survey serving in seven bases along the Antarctic Peninsula. It was heartening news that the British Royal Navy patrol vessel HMS Protector was on its way from Port Stanley in the Falkland Islands with 16 turkeys, 45,320 tots (2.5 ounces) of rum, 38,000 cans of beer, 30,000 packets of sweets and 12,000 ice creams, to brighten the lives of the “chaps” on 2 years’ service in a “man’s world” with “no feminine touch”. BBC Audio; www.bbcshop.com; (See also NAVY LARK Volume 18 (2006) and NAVY LARK Series Two Volume 1 (2004) in the following commentary.)

SONGS FOR EXISTENCE by Houston Davis Jones (2008) (Web site download only)

Houston Davis is a West Palm Beach, Florida-based singer/songwriter, sounding at times remarkably like the 1970s-era British folk artist Nick Drake. According to Houston’s myspace.com commentary, “Music is deeply rooted in mathematics. All concepts of harmony, melody and rhythm are represented by ratios and patterns. Mathematics is the language of the universe. No matter what societal language you may speak, a mathematical law will ring true in any country or known part of space. Music is the auditory manifestation of the language of mathematics, and is a powerful communicative device that can convey many different ideas and emotions to individuals of any background. The world is a beautiful, terrifying, and complex place, but when framed inside of a piece of music, reality becomes a little easier to handle.” His debut album contains the track Antarctica/The End of a Great Cycle. Lyrics are: “ I can see no shelter, I can’t see no place to hide from the storm, Shoreline slowly rising, Dry land getting hard to find, There were these clues, Warnings written on the wall for us to find, Left behind by a people time forgot, What did they know? How could they see what we were blind to, with all our research and technology? Now the time’s come to dance in this great ballet, to play our part in this play, the cosmic orchestra is nearing the coda. Let’s pray.”

We asked Houston Davis about the Antarctic theme of the lyrics and he explained: “There are three layers of meaning in the song: Level one is just about global warming and the melting of the polar ice caps. Level two treats many of the lyrics metaphorically in reference to human emotions. The third and primary reason is more complicated... there is a book called Fingerprints of the Gods by Graham Hancock, which is about the forgotten knowledge of the Egyptians and South American civilizations such as the Olmecs and Mayans. One of the bodies of evidence used to support the presence of advanced technology in these cultures is a set of maps from the 1500s (including the Turkish Admiral Piri Re’is map) that accurately chart Antarctica and its surrounding waters, despite the fact that Antarctica was not known of until 1773 and unexplored and unmapped until the mid 1800s. The cartographers of these 16^th century maps claim to have merely transcribed the maps from even earlier copies, which were supposedly recovered from the Egyptian libraries from Greeks. Accurate cartography wasn’t developed until well after the rise of western European culture and wasn’t even perfected until around the time of Columbus and the invention of the chronograph. The book suggests that due to these maps’ existence, we can assume that ancient cultures were mathematically savvy and able to achieve things that took our own culture thousands of years to accomplish. Of course the subject is very controversial and like much of history, is hotly debatable and indefinite. I do not necessarily believe that the maps are truly evidence of ancient technology but I do find the subject fascinating. The rest of the book talks about ancient mythology, the Noah flood, sunken cities, etc., and all those silly New Age things. It then proposes that the ancients are attempting to warn of us of impending disaster, which they then relate to 2012 and all that. I hope that helped you out, though I can understand if it just obfuscated the song title’s theme even more.” www.houstondavisjones.com

LUNETTES NOIRES POUR NUITS BLANCHES/ ANTARCTICA by Rock City Sixteen (2008) (Vinyl 45 rpm single only)

Rock City Sixteen is a five-member London, U.K.-based indie group (ex Havana Guns), which has been playing together since 2004. The flip side of this 500-issue 45 rpm single is Antarctica, a guitar-driven, edgy pop tune. According to the Internet-based music site, Von Pip Musical Express, “The single’s stark black and white art work is, as with previous releases under the Havana Guns moniker, stylish, cinematic, and cooler than Marlon Brando in an ice cream parlour in Antarctica, discussing the weather with Martin Scorsese in a snow storm” – a description sure to be a strong candidate for ranking highly in any list of classic Antarctic phraseology. Cigarette Music (no record # issued); www.myspace.com/rockcitysixteen

PIANO MANO by the Drill Feat, Firetruck & Antarctica (2008) (Vinyl LP only)

Matt Schwartz is a London-U.K-based composer and producer of dance music who uses various group names, both alone and with collaborators, including Antarctica, a co-project with Mark Gilbert. The swinging piano/synth track on this single-track LP has become an international club favourite. DESTO33DJC1; www.destined-records.com

REINVENTING THE HEARTBEAT by E For Explosion (2008)

Led by California/Kentucky-based Jamison Covington, the group’s CD of strong, big sounding melodic rock has the depressive track Antarctica. Lyrics: “Aren’t we leaving today? Abandoning the world, No more cities, We’ll kill technology, No more boys, No more girls. I’d prefer the snow, You and I, drown in the blue and cold, We’ll fall, So alone, Teach me how to whisper. Aren’t we leaving today? We’re learning to die, Learning to solve everything through beautiful goodbyes. I’d prefer the snow, We’ll fall, So alone, Teach me how to whisper.” Eyeball Records EYE20089; www.myspace.com/eforexplosion

HIDEAWAY by the Weepies (2008)

The Weepies are a Topanga, California-based married duo who have garnered acclaim with their brand of melodic folk-rock/pop tunes, a number of which have appeared on mainstream TV drama programs. Their current third CD includes the wistful song Antarctica. Lyrics: “Left behind everything I knew, All the colors but bone-white and sky-blue, Hit the continent running, Engines were humming just to break through. Antarctica, my only living relative. Antarctica, I can’t wait anymore. Under ice there’s a world moving slow, Carnelian stars and the bars down below, Serve only vodka and gin, I try to stay drunk so nobody knows. And then there’s morning, Each one feels like the first one. Ah morning, so clean, so pure, Nothing so clear, now that I’m here. When I get back to the city, Everything’s cluttered and pretty. I won’t regret my return, I’ll just remember the wind and snow, And the howling so loud, That it alone drowns out the inside of me.” Nettwerk Records 0 6700 30777 2 9; www.theweepies.com

ANTARCTICA by Tactile, Spinline, Munk + Naibu/BREAK by Liveevil (2008) (Vinyl LP only)

The 7-minute drums & bass track Antarctica, a collaboration between a trio from Budapest, Hungary and a Parisian, has some icy chants and floating musical effects. Levitated Recordings LVTD 009; www.myspace.com/spinlinekru; www.levitated.org

THE FRED ALLEN SHOW- Life at the South Pole

Fred Allen was a vaudeville comedian who appeared on Broadway and became one of America’s most popular humorists in the classic radio era in the 1930s and 1940s. During that time he hosted and starred in long running half or hour-long topical satire radio comedy shows. The program of Feb. 28, 1940, Life at the South Pole, had an 11-minute Admiral Byrd spoof about Admiral Allen at Little Brooklyn Base at the South Pole. Being very cold and running out of food, the camp managed to get a radio transmission to Irving’s delicatessen in New York, which offered to deliver cold cuts to the base. Many of the Fred Allen programs have been digitally preserved and are available for purchase from the Web sites listed below. We obtained this CD in 2008. FA-014; www.originaloldradio.com; www.radioshowcds.com; www.oldclassicradio.com; www.otrstreet.com

BOB & RAY: The Soap Operas, Volume 6 (2007)

Bob Elliott and Ray Goulding were Boston broadcasters who became American national radio comedy icons over the late 1940s to the 1980s. Their deadpan form of interviewing spoofed the medium in which they worked. This box set of 4 CDs contains the 5-minute track Bob visits Harold Haskell’s home in Antarctica, in which a member of Admiral Byrd’s last expedition decided to remain and had made Antarctica his home for 30 years and was just adding some weather-stripping as the interview began. No information given on the date of the sketch. RadioArt RACD 5031-4; www.bobandray.com

TAGAP - Original Soundtrack of The Apocalyptic Game About Penguins by Petja Heiskanen (2007) (Web site download only)

This is the musical soundtrack to a computer game developed by Jouni Lahtinen and is available for free on the game’s Website. The two collaborators are based in Finland. The soundtrack has 33 battle-oriented musical selections of various lengths, largely rock oriented with a few novelty scenic interludes. In addition to some penguin-themed tracks (Funky Penguin, Penguin’s Retirement, Penguinator, Rogue Penguin), it includes the 3-minute Antarctic Suite. In the Web site, in response to the question, “Are you trying to ride on Hollywood’s penguin boom or something?”, the composer said that “My ‘penguin boom’ has been going on for over 15 years and I love those waddling birds more than life itself. I just adore them, they’re the supreme beings! But it’s nice to notice big masses are finally realizing the same thing and have rewarded these flightless birds with Oscars two years in a row!” www.tagap.net

ZILLION CD15 – OBSCURITY by various artists (2007)

This Dutch three-CD compilation of various electronic instrumental dance tracks includes Antartica by Aqua Nova, which alternates between pounding beats and quiet interludes, much like the nature of the Continent itself. Digidance DIGI 226-2; www.digidance.cc

LEGENDS NEVER DIE by the Dreadnoughts (2007)

Vancouver, B.C.’s Dreadnoughts are a superbly talented quintet playing a mixture of loud, punkish, modern Celtic-flavoured pub rock, laced with sea shanty influences, fiddles and other traditional instruments. One of the tracks is Antarctica, about a ship off to the Southern Ocean, likely on a whaling expedition - but it’s hard to make out the lyrics from the loud music and tough vocals. www.thedreadnoughts.com; www.myspace.com/vancitydreadnoughts

POP.VOX.CHRISTMAS Volume 2 by various artists (2007)

This is a compilation of traditional Christmas carols and a few original novelty songs, played in wondrous and quirky arrangements by indie rock bands or folk artists. Pop.vox bills itself on its Website as a California-based label for a community of artists “to integrate their feelings, beliefs and faith into their work in an innovative way...we hope to see artists who are Christians, rather than Christian artists.” Included is The Antarctic Circle by Racing at Nineteen, the only instrumental on the disc. It’s a stately churchlike organ/synth track, underlain by a resonant cathedral bass but is the only one without a Christmas title or evident seasonal connection. A representative of the record label told us that “We included the song because we thought it was beautiful and a perfect conclusion to our compilation.” Christopher Bright, the composer, told us in 2008 that “the song was initially based on pictures I’d seen of different parts of Antarctica. I was really interested by them and wondered how landscapes like that would translate into music. I wanted something that would feel cold and fairly isolated, but would have a little bit of mystery and adventure to it.” VOX 7; www.popvoxmusic.com; www.myspace.com/popvoxmusic

HYPNOTICA Compilation 2007 by various artists (2007)

This Swiss compilation CD of electronic dance/trance music contains the forceful, percussive track Antarctica by Tux-Edo, which starts with the ominous spoken introduction, “Antarctica is the one continent where humans may forever be strangers.” Room31 Records R31001; www.arabesque.co.uk

THE LESS THAT WE ARE by Patient Patient (2007)

The Seattle, Washington indie band has the hard rocking track Antarctica, with no apparent connection to The Ice. The lyrics nevertheless leave some food for Antarctic thought: “Those things you can’t contain, love, just let them out…We are all rational people, don’t you push us to the edge.” www.patientpatientband.com; www.myspace.com/patientpatientband

EXPANSE by Graham Elks and Phil Crewe (2007)

Elks and Crewe are veterans of various British bands and studio veterans. Since 1999 they have collaborated as a guitar duo and multi-instrumentalists on six instrumental CDs of atmospheric progressive rock. Their latest disc includes Antarctica, a sublime 13-minute searing cauldron, rather than bottomless crevasse, of a guitar blowout. www.grahamelks-philcrewe.com

GRYNINGSFOLK I SKYMNINGSLAND by Biljardakademien (2007)

Biljardakademien was a literate Swedish postpunk, light rock group from the early 1980s. This recent collection of their 1982-1985 recordings and demo tracks includes the jazzy folk-rock track Shackleton mot Antarktis (Shackleton to Antarctica) from 1985. Bendi Recycled BEN-RE-002; www.bendirecords.com

IRISH LIFE AND LORE SERIES - KERRY COLLECTION - FIRST SERIES - with Padraig Begley (2007)

Jane and Maurice O’Keeffe began recording the oral history of Irish counties in 1990 and to date have an archive of over 1000 hour-long CDs of interviews covering history, livelihoods, folklore and storytelling. This CD is based on Maurice’s chat with Padraig Begley, who was 93 years of age at the time of the interview. In it, he tells a few first-hand stories about Tom Crean, one of the giants of the Golden Era of Antarctic Exploration, who served in Scott’s 1901-04 National Antarctic Expedition, Scott’s 1910-13 British Antarctic Expedition and even more famously as part of Shackleton’s 1914-17 Endurance Expedition team. Crean was part of the team that made the journey in the James Caird from Elephant Island to South Georgia, and then struggled over the mountains to rescue. Crean retired in 1920 to run a hotel at Annascaul, County Kerry, Ireland, which he called the South Pole Inn. In the interview, Padraig tells about an incident at the pub in the inn and how Crean carried Shackleton on one of the polar journeys. For the non-Irish, the accent may be a bit hard to follow. CD No. 55; www.irishlifeandlore.com

SEB PIPE’S LIFE EXPERIENCE by Seb Pipe (2007)

Seb Pipe, a prizewinning British alto saxophonist, has recorded a live CD with his jazz trio, including the multi-hued 12-minute track Antarctic Twilight. Seb told us that, “the music in Antarctic Twilight was inspired by images of Antarctic landscapes. It is my group’s expression of those images through the medium of sonic expression. The music contains both pre-composed and spontaneously composed (or improvised) elements based upon the pre-composed themes.” 5060080790838; www.sebpipe.com

ANTARTIC ABYSS by the Deep Blue (2007)

This is a largely instrumental heavy metal CD by a British trio, apparently about the perils of an ocean tyrant, frozen in the ice, rising to the skies. One of the tracks is called Under the Ice. The CD cover has an outline of Antarctica as a sun radiating forth over icebergs. the Church Within records CW006; www.myspace.com/thedeepbluewizard

L’ANTARCTICA by Madee (2007)

Madee is an established indie Spanish rock group. Despite the title, their latest CD includes only the track L’Antarctica, a slow burning and moody piece with just vague hints of The Ice: “Promises are gone, to a frostbitten place, and you didn’t notice when your dilemmas broke us up.” www.bcore.com

EVRIPIDIS AND HIS TRAGEDIES (2007)

Barcelona, Spain-based Evripidis (Sabatis) and his group of largely female back-up singers have an interesting CD of piano-based art rock, theatrical songs embellished with the occasional do wop and Beach Boyish harmonies. Included is the allegorical Antarctica. Sample lyrics: “Ice Ice Ice Ice Ice Ice Ice, millions of years old, and all around an ocean full of life, krill and fish and penguins and seabirds and seals and whales, So much life around a cold empty heart. Don’t try to heat me up baby, it’s dangerous, the atmosphere is getting warmer, the ice melts, an iceblock was parted from the icecap and collapsed, and 10,000 penguins met death, in the cold water. Venice is drowning! soon Holland will be under waves, and what will come next. I’ve been sleeping a cold sleep for about a billion years, I’ve been calm and alone for about a billion years, I’ve been without dreams for about a billion years, now what will come next if you keep heating me up like this, with your love?” Touchmerecords TMR 01; www.myspace.com/evripidisandhistragedies

HEAT by Marusha (2007)

Marusha (Gleiss) has been a prominent German DJ, media performer and award-winning recording artist since the early 1990s. Her latest techno/dance CD has the track Antarctica, long on groove and short on lyrics: “Water, emptiness, silence enlight life of Antarctica – untouched nature creates existence.” ElectroMotor MOTO8152; www.marusha.de

SPIRITUAL CATHARSIS by Striborg (2007)

This is a re-release of an original 2004 CD, which was limited to 500 copies, by the elusive solo black metal artist Sin Nanna (aka Striborg), who lives near Hobart, Tasmania. It contains the sludgy instrumental track Dicksonia Antartica, which led us to the reference books. Dicksonia Antarctica is also known as the Soft Tree Fern or Tasmanian Tree Fern and may be the best known of all the tree ferns. It is native to southeastern Australia and Tasmania, but has also been grown in Britain for years and is found in western North America and is reported on a few subantarctic islands. It was named in 1807 after James Dickson, a Scottish nurseryman and “Antarctica” refers to “southern.” In a review on his record company’s web site with online magazine Terrorizer, the artist says that his only “spiritual connection lies within Gaia… The true spirit of Mother Nature is my only source of enlightenment and can only be felt when free of mankind. And I do not care if anybody thinks I’m being politically or ecologically incorrect as this is the way I perceive the world on a spiritual level.” The CD liner notes introduce the track with “Majestic plants among the moss and water, Towering towards the mysterious sky, Metres of bear-like trunks braying over the rocks upon my tread...Many ferns grow in this wilderness, Untouched land of magic proportions, Only the creatures of nature dwell here, Native to its glorious land.” This heavy metal track has succeeded admirably to put us in the frame of mind of a steamy, smoldering, prehistoric Gondwana/Pangaea supercontinent, to thoughts about a tropical Antarctica, Antarctic dinosaurs, Glossopteris fossils and whatever else may be lying preserved and hidden for countless eons beneath the horrendous weight of interminable miles of compressed ice, waiting to unleash its secrets with the onslaught of Global Warming. Whew! Displeased Records D-00171; www.displeasedrecords.com; www.myspace.com/striborg

NEXT STOP ANTARCTICA by the Green Mist (2007)

The title of their first CD is appropriate for an Australian rock band collective that had its beginnings in Tasmania. The music starts out as instrumental roots rock and then veers to a harder sound with vocals. Unfortunately, their trip hasn’t reached anywhere near The Ice yet and the journey does not include any Antarctic songs. MIST001CD; www.myspace.com/themysteriousgreenmist

ANTARCTIC SUNRISE by A Hundred Times Beloved (2007)

Formed in 2003 as a solo project for Regensburg (Bavaria), Germany-based Felix Neumann, the group now includes Christian Winklhofer and others for live shows. As there are no specific Antarctic tracks on this CD of melodic vocal guitar electronica rock, we asked Felix about the Antarctic influences. He told us that, “After finishing the recording of our CD, we gave the tracks to a friend. He told us that he liked the atmosphere of the CD because the production had a strong contrast between warm and cold sound elements. And so we chose this metaphor for cold (Antarctic) and warm (Sunrise).” Alison Records AL-102; www.ahundredtimesbeloved.de

WATERS RISING by Lillian Axe (2007)

Lillian Axe is a long-established (1983) heavy rock/metal group from New Orleans. Their melodic seventh CD has the track Antarctica. Lyrics: “I climbed the mountains and scaled the ice. Released defiance. My blood ran white, cold and numb. I saw the shadows of demigods. Whispering answers that time forgot. Forever true. I’m frozen blue. There’s not much time. I died for you. A true believer, the king of lies. We all betrayed you. Your blood ran white. I’m frozen blue. There’s not much time. I died for you. Antarctica.” Steve Blaze, original member and lead guitarist told us, “This song was written to correlate the vastness of Antarctica to the isolation and emptiness that we experience in our lives. When I imagine the infinite whiteness and desolation of that area, it overwhelms me. It’s beautiful yet frightening.” Locomotive Records LM493; www.lillianaxe.com

STRAWBERRY T. V. SHOW by the Smiles (2007)

The Smiles are a Korean septuplet with a CD of light, breezy, polished pop rock that has the track South Pole Sunset. We’re not sure whether this refers to the real thing, or their mixing studio, called the South Pole Lab. Sample lyrics: “I love you south pole’s sunset glow, Toll is free, come on down tomorrow, I love you south pole’s sunset glow, Free as they’ll ever be… Hold my hand I’ll take you to my greatest viewing seat, Call my name you’re welcome to my south pole picnic spree.” Beatball Records BEAT33

SÜDPOL by Reuber (2007)

Timo Reuber is an analog synthesizer musician from Cologne, Germany, with four CDs. This latest one contains the tracks Amundsen and Südpol (South Pole), two interesting instrumentals with plenty of arpeggiated bubbles, gurgles and beats. Staubgold 75; www.staubgold.com

DES COBRAS, DES TARANTULES by 3 Gars Su’l Sofa (2007)

The band of three guys on the sofa are a trio from the Montreal area with their first CD of melodic, acoustic folk music, just pickin’ and singin’ in Quebecois slang, known as joual. The songs have a sunny, everyday disposition and include L’Antarctique, which at just over a minute, might be the shortest Antarctic song recorded. The lyrics are pure minimalism (our translation): “In Antarctica everything is always cold and white. There’s no road, you just go straight ahead in front. When it’s dark, it’s because it’s time to go inside, and play cards, for a longtime.” PIXCD 7499; www.3gss.ca

PEAR & SISTER PINECONE by Page France (2007)

The Baltimore, Maryland soft folk rock group, led by Michael Nau, has a reputation for putting on vibrant, homey live shows. They include Antarctica (My Beloved Home) on this 2-disc CD. “When did your eyes’ glaze dull, my Antarctica, my beloved home, they treat you like a dog, my Antarctica, my beloved home, they treat you like a dog, I’m sorry if I joined along.” Fall Records FR93442; www.fallrecords.com; www.pagefrance.net

AUSSIE CHRISTMAS WITH BUCKO & CHAMPS Volumes I & II (2006)

Colin Buchanan and Greg Champion are each veteran Australian musicians and performers on Australian radio and TV and individually have many CDs to their names. They collaborated on these two CDs of largely their own comedic Christmas songs, some of which have a particularly pointed but lighthearted Australian slant on matters. The songs were recorded or remixed over 1994/97/98/99 and reissued in 2006 as a double CD, which includes bonus karaoke sing-along music tracks. Volume I, nominated for an Australian comedy record award, contains the track Santa’s Moving to the South Pole. With references to two Australian Antarctic base names in a Santa song, it is clear that Australians take their Antarctic heritage seriously.

Lyrics are: “It was in the middle of last July, When Santa jumped out of bed, He said I’ve had enough of this old North Pole, I’m headin’ South instead. His accountant said it’s risky, There’s a likelihood of failure, But Santa said, “I need a Pole that’s closer to Australia!” Chorus: Say goodbye to the Northern Blizzards, And the bitter Arctic cold, Hello sun and surf and sand, Santa’s movin’ to the South Pole./ He’s got the suntan oil, Hawaiian shirt, He’s shifted operations, All winter long he’s gonna surf The break at Casey Station. The palm trees and the nightlife, Happy days are here, His mail’s been redirected to the Southern Hemisphere. /Chorus/ It’s a little far from Amsterdam, And Moscow’s many a mile, But down at the Mawson Reef Hotel, He’s kickin’ back in style. Cos when the Christmas rush is really on, Come December 24, Santa loves the South Pole best, Cos Australia’s right next door!”

Greg told us in 2008 that “Here in Australia, we experience a lot of Northern Hemisphere Christmas imagery and music: songs about snow, winter, cold, etc, that do not correspond to our hot Southern Hemisphere Christmases. So Mr. Buchanan and I, in writing songs about the Aussie Christmas, took traditional Northern Hemisphere ideas and ‘morphed’ them into Southern Hemisphere concepts: we took Santa out of the North Pole and brought him closer to Australia.” At the same time, one of Colin’s associates told us that she “just spoke to Colin, who has a fantastic sense of humour, thanks to God. He said Santa comes from the North Pole so he thought he would try the South Pole and see Santa’s experiences.” Wanaaring Road Music & The Greg Champion Group OR 088; www.colinbuchanan.com.au; www.gregchampion.com.au

TANGERINE DRAM PLAYS TANGERINE DREAM (2006)

Tangerine Dream is an internationally successful German recording and touring synthesizer/electronic music group formed in the late 1960s. This CD contains re-recordings and re-mixes of group pieces, performed by the original composers or by musicians associated with the band over its 40 year life. Included is the opening track South Pole Crossing, a forceful, rhythmic piece performed by Paul Haslinger for the Japanese documentary production Mandala. He co-wrote the track with the founding and only remaining original member Edgar Froese. Eastgate Music and Media; www.tangerinedream-music.com

F**K THE FUTURE by Foot Village (2006)

Foot village is a post apocalypse world-rebuilding drum quartet, with members from various Los Angeles, California underground groups. The tracks on the CD are largely named after countries of the world and consist of the name of the country being shouted out and followed by demonic percussion, with occasional chants or vocals. Included are two separate tracks entitled Antartica. The first one follows the general trend of massive pounding primitivism, while the second one is completely atypical of the CD, being an ambient-like drone, accompanied by various percussive sounds that do much to create a frozen continental sound impression. Deathbomb Arc DBA073; Excite Bike EXBX005; NGWTT; Olfactory Records OF008; www.myspace.com/footvillage

RUINING EVERYTHING FOR EVERYONE by 24 Hour Taco Shop (2006)

24 Hour taco Shop is a ska, rock and reggae sextet of high school seniors (as at 2008) from Pittsburgh, PA, showcasing a trumpet-driven happy-time musical sound. Their debut CD contains the track Antarctica, which may lay claim to be one of the jolliest Antarctic tunes recorded. It begins with the announcement, “All Antarcticans please enter the baggage claim.” Sample chorus: “Antarctica is the place for smiles, no phone service, no speed dial...there’s no sand, there’s only snow.” Drummer and co-lyricist Justin Culotta told us about the lyrics: “In all honesty, I felt like making a song that was about Antarctica for no real reason, but if you listen closely to the lyrics, half of them are intended to not make any sense, and we also have a song called the North Pole that is similar.” www.myspace.com/24hourtacoshoppa

RADIO SWAN IS DOWN by Laura (2006)

Melbourne’s rock group Laura was formed in 2001 and has attracted critical success with its second CD of largely instrumental, dense, atmospheric rock. Included is the slow, moody track Lake Vostok Beachfront. Andrew Chalmers, guitarist, vocalist and noisemaker with the band told us in 2008 that “I read about Lake Vostok in Scientific American or something. It’s amazing...isolated for such a long time, but sooner or later, somebody will open it up, or the ice over it will melt...not as spectacular as the ocean rushing through the Straits of Gibraltar and filling up the Mediterranean Sea, but still a pretty big moment. I think I like the idea of Lake Vostok because the immediate reaction is, “it’s so ancient and isolated”, but on the other hand it seems so precarious - the thought of an underground lake encased in ice makes me instantly think, “it’s perfect, so what will it take to ruin it? Who destroys it? Why? Is it intentional? Is it a consequence of human action? Are humans even around?” At some point, there may well be a Lake Vostok beachfront, and it might be a nice place to have a house. Or at some point there may be ash on Lake Vostok, and an end might have been put to life on earth. All very melodramatic, huh? What am I, twelve years old?” Alone Again Records Day006cd; www.lauratheband.com; www.myspace.com/lauranoise

HARLEM HOMECOMING by Salim Washington and Harlem Arts Ensemble (2006)

Led by the New York-based Washington on tenor sax, flute, oboe and vocals, the nucleus of the ensemble performs regularly in Harlem. The horn section has been together for nearly two decades. In addition to his own group, Washington plays with numerous other groups throughout North and South America and Europe. He has been a college musical educator and participant in committees and panels on behalf of jazz. The current energetic CD of original tunes has the short free-form track There is Now Grass Growing in Antarctica. Salim told us in 2008 that in the track, “I was trying to call attention to the problem of global warming and the fact that we pay too little attention to the preservation of our planet and its wonderful variety. That the global warming trends are showing up even in Antarctica is cause for alarm, and in my small way, wanted to bring attention to this fact.” The liner notes explain that the track was “sparked by my good friend and brother, Kobinah Abdul-Salim. He explained to me one day that there is now grass growing in Antarctica, and it occurred to me that this was more important than the political and economic devastation that so many face. What does it profit us, even if we win our political and cultural battles, if we destroy our world?” Ujam Records 126; www.ujamrecords.com

THE BRIGHT DAY IS GONE by Children of the Stones (2006)

Children of the Stones are a collective of Irish musicians, led by David Colohan, who is also involved with several other rock group endeavours. The present CD has a very mystical feel to it with the sounds ranging from ambient instrumental tracks to plaintive piano-based folk music, including Poor Scott, a plaintive and melancholy ode to Robert Scott’s ill-fated South Pole march in 1911-12. The song ends as abruptly and as ominously as the journey. Lyrics: “With a sailboat bound for McMurdo Sound and winter-long nights behind, and our last few miles under frozen skies across the inland seas tonight. Heading south the last post lies across the ice, we’ll stick it out until the end. This most travelled scene where the ice shelf leaves and drifts off into the mists, and Mt. Erebus looms before us like a gravestone for our trip. Heading south the last post lies across the ice, we’ll stick it out until the end. January took us to the South Pole, found a flag standing in the snow, and there were storm clouds building in the southern skies, across the inland seas.” Shane Cullinane told us in 2008: “The song was co-written by myself and Dave Colohan of Agitated Radio Pilot about 5 years ago. I can no longer remember why we decided to write about Scott but I do remember us each going through the World Book encyclopedia looking for lyrical ideas, I’m not sure if the idea came from the book or if we had the idea and then looked up the books. The new United Bible Studies album, to be released soon on Camera Obscura Records, has a song called Death in the Arctic, which is a section of a Robert Service poem set to music. Wrong pole for you though, I suppose.” Deserted Village DC026; www.desertedvillage.com

I WANNA PLAY by Bill Harley (2006)

Bill Harley is Massachusetts-based Grammy award-winning children’s entertainer, author, story-teller and public radio broadcaster. The booklet of his current CD says that his “original work combines song and story to paint a vibrant, humorous and meaningful portrait of American Life.” The track To the South Pole answers the age-old question of where a young lad is to seek refuge when in trouble with his mother. As one of Bill’s production company representatives told us, “When a kid is in trouble he thinks of the furthest place to run.” Sample lyrics: “Dear mom, please read this letter, Before you walk inside, I think you’ll feel just a little bit better, If you’re not too surprised…I didn’t know about the carpet, I didn’t know about the sink, I didn’t know that the cat would do that, I didn’t know the paint was pink, You know I tried to make things better, I thought I could fix it still, Next time I won’t use the hammer, Or the glue gun or the drill…It’s a long way, I’m bound to travel, To where the snow falls and the cold winds blow, Where the penguins play on the icebergs, to the South Pole, I must go…Please don’t cry, Don’t shed no tears, I’ll be back when things are better, In twenty-seven years.” Round River Records 121; www.billharley.com

LOVE, PEACE, JUSTICE by Martin Jeremiah (2006)

Martin Jeremiah is a singer, songwriter and guitarist from West Sussex, England. His current CD has the track Twenty Forty Two, about his concern for the future of Antarctica. It is one of the most heartfelt and empathetic Antarctic songs we’ve encountered. The lyrics are: “Up above a virgin snow-white land, is a hole so big and round, and comes piercing through that empty space. The sun it’s beating down, as her big blue ice heart melts. Her white face sheds its tears. Where a footprint that’s in the moss can last a hundred years. And the twisted metal of machines spoils the land of people’s snow-white dreams. Children where are you in 2042? Children where are you in 2042? As the seals all in their white beds lie, the hunter strikes his blow, and where once the emperor penguins played, there’s red tracks in the snow. As man pursues his blackest gold, explosions under sea. As longest day, it turns to longest night, the whale and dolphin flee. And the oil slicks they do impress an ugly stain on Nature’s wedding dress. Children where are you? And the tangled metal of machines spoils the land of peoples snow-white dreams. Children where are you?”

In 2008, Martin told us: “I wrote the song after seeing a talk by a guy called Robert Swan who walked to both Poles. He ran a programme in the last few years called Mission Antarctica which concentrated on cleaning up Antarctica (debris from previous bases, etc.) with young people as volunteers. The international treaty protecting Antarctica against commercial exploitation is due for renewal in 2041 and so Robert Swan named the boat that took people on the trips ‘2041’ to highlight this fact. The logic behind raising awareness amongst children and young people is that they might one day be the people who are still around to see the treaty protecting Antarctica renewed. It is the last unspoiled place on this planet, but the fear is, that it may not remain so after 2041.

I therefore wrote “2042” mainly as an apocalyptic vision of what might happen if the treaty is not renewed. However the song is also partly a tribute to a young woman called Pip Gregory who tragically died of medical complications on one of the Mission Antarctica trips. The song hopes to highlight the grave responsibility for our children in the chorus “Oh children where are you, in 2042”, i.e. please don’t fail in your mission to continue to protect Antarctica, because this is what is likely to happen and there is no going back.” Red White & Green Records RWG CDR0601; www.rwgrecords.com

THE NAVY LARK Volume 18 (2006)

The Navy Lark, the longest running comedy program in British radio history, was a concoction about the antics of the crew of HMS Troutbridge, on the BBC airwaves from March 1959 to July 1977 with 15 series. This double CD of four episodes includes Back from the Antarctic, broadcast on July 2, 1967. This caper has the Troutbridge, apparently returning from Antarctica, with a flotilla of various ships in tow. The program theme music was composed by harmonica virtuoso Tommy Reilly and by James Moody. BBC Audio; www.bbcshop.com; (See also NAVY LARK Series 4 Volume 2 (2008) and NAVY LARK Series Two Volume 1 (2004) in this section.)

RESISTANCE: 2012 by Stereomotion (2006)

Stereomotion is the Goth electro/industrial solo project of German Florian Jäger. This disc includes the drum-heavy track Antarctica. Florian told us, “The inspiration for the track rests upon a strong yearning for loneliness, pureness and serenity. A strange feeling…a cold shelter. I was mesmerized by the Antarctic-theme when I wrote the song. The whale samples in the background emphasize the feelings which I wanted to convey with the track.” e-noxe nx048; www.stereomotion.de

SLIMMER DAN DE ZANGER by Bart Peeters (2006)

Peeters is a Flemish composer/TV personality/perfomer with a CD of interesting Euro rock and continental cabaret style songs, complete with accordion and mid-eastern instrumentation. Included on the CD (English title: Cleverer Than The Singer) is Pinguin Op Antarctica. His management company told us, “The song text is about all the things we have to communicate, but conversation and language itself is often a problem. So, you can chat with a penguin in Antarctica, you can send an E-mail to the moon.....” As the lyrics ask: “With three billion channels and TVs everywhere, why can’t we understand each other?” EMI 0094637696521; www.bartpeeters.net

ANTARCTICA TAKES IT! by the Penguin League (2006)

And yet another indie group with kitchen sing-along appeal, this time from Santa Cruz, California, complete with accordion, glockenspiel, cello, violin, trumpet and ukulele. One of the (best) songs is the joyous, image-filled Antarctica; sample lyrics: “We stole away from the crown of flame, For a cold land without a name, We had our maps and our compass set for the long journey ahead…We traced shapes across the starry skies, made our way through each tender night, We heard the weary whales too, And sang along ‘neath the silver moon, Antarctica you stole our hearts…We felt the madness shake our souls, And grew our beards down to our toes…” The back cover even has a picture of a lopsided Sno-cat with attached crevasse detectors. www.myspace.com/antarcticatakesit

EMPIRE OF SILENCE by the port fish (2006)

The port fish are a synthesizer duo from the Slovak Republic, with a CD of bubbly, atmospheric instrumental music, including the eight-minute track Antarctic. One half of the duo, Flow, explained for us the motivation for the track: “Well, I really don't know - the idea just came, and as we were working on the track we fell into the kind of mood like someone being alone in some deserted, frosty place. That’s how we came with the track title “Antarctic”. We’re usually trying to create some picture or short story from what we feel from our music, just for ourselves, to find the best title for every track. Sometimes it is fun, sometimes a torture... that’s how it goes.” iam-por-001; www.portfish.net

SHERBET by Newbie Brad (2006)

This is a solo CD of experimental electronic music by Tennessean Newbie Brad. Together with Pantha under the name 3 Pups Music, they either work alone, with each other, or with other artists, using electronic wind instruments, fretless electric guitar, software and other noisemakers to make rock, noise, ambient or orchestral music. The CD contains the track Salaam Antarctica and Newbie Brad told us, “My recollection is that Salaam Antarctica and Pengy were recordings I made on a challenge from another musician to make some compositions or recordings with Antarctica in mind. I made the compositions and recordings with my fretless electric guitar and manipulated the guitar’s signal through some software. I know the recordings are very odd, but I was happy with them. We produced a video called “Medley’ that includes the audio from Salaam Antarctica and Pengy" and the audio from another selection called “57 Midnights”: (www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0Kofc-kNig).” 3PC-32006; 3pupsmusic.com

KAUAI by Chet (2006)

Victoria, B. C. band Chet offers a CD of haunting tunes and very idiosyncratic vocals by crooner Ryan Beattie. Included is the tropical-influenced Antarctica, with sample lyrics, “There’s some white bones out on the ice, and on a desolate night, when there’s no hope in sight, there are Hawaiian skies…You man the oars for a while. You talk yourself to sleep in the cold. You pull the heartstrings (of the men). You talk yourself to sleep in the cold…and out on the ice, there’s a lingering vice. If we don’t die of exposure, we’re bound to die of failure. A small taste of victory will soften your memory. There’s no beaches, no palms. Just the music of Hawaiian love songs.” Ryan informed us that the motivation for the track “is determination in spite of great nostalgic temptation, Ernest Shackleton being a prime example. Hawaii being his (in this story anyway) temptation/romance/will on such desolate terms.” ARG105; www.aaarghrecords.com

XENOPHOBIA by Rob Astor (2006)

Michigan-based synthesizer artist Rob Astor has made numerous instrumental CDs. This double disc includes the track Topic of Antarctica, with a floating 12 string guitar sound and a bass thundering like a falling glacier. www.myspace.com/soloartistrobastor

CENTURIES BEFORE LOVE AND WAR by Stars of Track and Field (2006)

The debut CD by this upcoming indie band from Portland, Oregon includes the wistful guitar-driven anthemic Movies of Antarctica. Wind-up 60150-13124-2; www.starsoftrackandfield.com

MOTION PICTURE MUSIC ’94 -’05 by Mick Harvey (2006)

Mick Harvey is an Australian rock musician, solo artist and member of the group, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. This CD is a collection of his film soundtracks, which include the 2004 Australian Simon Nasht-directed documentary, Frank Hurley - The Man Who Made History. Frank Hurley was Shackleton’s esteemed photographer on the Endurance Expedition. The eight short, spare Frank Hurley tracks include three Antarctic themes: Setting Sail, Antarctica, and Things Gone Wrong. Mute Records 0094537749425; www.mickharvey.com

PROGRESS · REFORM by iLiKETRAiNS (2006)

Only a British group (this one is from Leeds) could open their debut disc with a track called Terra Nova, named after Robert Scott’s 1910-1912 South Pole expedition and ship. The music for this song (as well as for the entire disc) is slow, heavy and brooding, reflecting the deep subjects of thought. A special inclusion is the video of the Terra Nova soundtrack, portraying the fated South Pole march. It is complete with a miniature ship, expeditioners and styrofoam ice. Especially moving is the scene of the group climbing up through the Beardmore Glacier to the ice cap and the later scene played out by Titus Oates as he struggles out the tent to his death. fierce panda canada fpc nong43cd; www.iLiKETRAiNS.co.uk

GARDEN CITIES OF TOMORROW by Lullaby Baxter (2006)

From her singing career beginnings in Montreal almost a decade ago, Baxter’s second CD is a treasure of melodic pop with various instrumentation and breathy vocals. It includes the track Antarctica. Boompa BPA015; www.lullabybaxter.com

ANTARCTICA a storybook record by the Never (2006)

This is a combination CD and small, illustrated book about a small boy, Paul, and his misadventures with a witch. When he gets scared, he “closes his eyes and goes to Antarctica just in his mind.” The CD is by a North Carolina rock group, one of whose members wrote the book and includes the track Antarctica. TRK 023; www.trekkyrecords.com

HOT LOVE by Buttercup (2006)

San Antonio, Texas is home base for these performance artists/ vocal driven rock group, which has a puzzling song, Anti-Antarctica on their CD, with the chorus, “so come to me now, come further south, Antarctica, Anti-Antarctica.” www.buttercult.com

LOVER, THE LORD HAS LEFT US by the Sound of Animals Fighting (2006)

Progressive, experimental rock music from a California ensemble of musicians from various indie bands. St. Broadrick is in Antarctica is a strange musical/vocal chant with no apparent connection with the continent. Evr127; www.thesoundofanimalsfighting.com

MUSICAL MISSIONS by Little Einsteins (2006)

This CD is a Walt Disney Records’ undertaking to promote children’s development through music and rhythm. One of the four musical voyages the kids take on the CD is to Antarctica, backed by Mozart’s Eine Kleine Nachtmusik. Disney 5008 61430-7; www.littleeinsteins.com

MOVEMENTS by Black Tie Dynasty (2006)

With a 1980s British guitar-synth band sound, this Dallas group has a track called Antarctica. IDOL Records IR 054; www.blacktiedynasty.com

LITERATURE by Dexxx (2006)

Dexxx is a Nashville-based urban grunge folkie. His CD includes the track Antarctica, about lost love: “You don’t need no flare gun tonight, ghost pains tell me where you are, 75º latitude, southern latitude, Antarctica”. Rockstarmessiah Records

STRING THEORY by Technetium (2006)

Seattle-based Technetium has issued numerous dance and club music CDs and this one contains the forceful instrumental Antarctica. Lorilee is the sole group member and she told us that, “I have a very deep fondness of the Antarctic. To me it is one of the world wonders, perfect for the photographer or for the arts because it is so pristine and untouched. There are not many places left in this world that hold such a natural beauty. Like the Aurora Borealis, there are some things in this world that can never be fully captured: the power, the beauty or even the hardship of the area. I tried in the song Antarctica but I only captured a small glimpse of what the region really has to offer. More songs would be needed to fully bridge upon the complexity, although I will save that for a future time. I am so happy to hear that others share my fondness of Antarctica.” WTFD Records 2006-041; www.technetiumrecords.com

STRING THEORY by The Determined Luddites (2006)

Led by twin mandolins, this virtuostic progressive folk/bluegrass quartet from Tucson has a song called Emperor of Antarctica. “Home, it’s where the heart is, but what about a heart that’s been cast upon the sand, Now I sit around and dream I’m the emperor of Antarctica, With storms and rivers of ice at my command….When I’m tanked up I believe I’m the emperor of Antarctica , And I guess I’ll have one more bottle of beer." When asked about the reason for the song, Dan Hostetler, vocalist and guitarist, told us, “Thanks for your question, possibly one of the more unusual requests I have gotten. I confess that I lifted the phrase the “emperor of Antarctica” from Sylvia Nasar’s biography of mathematician John Forbes Nash, “A Beautiful Mind”. Mr. Nash suffered from schizophrenia, and at the height of his delusional state, he imagined himself the emperor of Antarctica. When I read that passage, it struck me as a perfect metaphor for a state of emotional turmoil, and I used it for that and as a contrast to the rest of my song, which is set in and around the Sonoran Desert where I live. Hope that answers your question. It is hard to imagine there is a lot of music out there about Antarctica but one never knows. Enjoy the music.” Escape Goat Records 004; www.biggaloot.com/luddites

RETURN OF THE LYRICIST by Prophit (2006)

Hip hop/rap music from Tacoma, Washington-based Nelson Hurd includes the track Ice Man Antarctic Breeze. With more than 20 years of writing under his belt, Nelson’s advice is to keep moving. His lyrics are treacherously vicious and not for the casual easy listener. Prophit told us that “I came up with Antarctic Breeze because to me it is the purest air on earth, mostly untamed with all the pollution that clouds most of the earth’s air, relating to the song because it is not catering to what MTV or BET or any other commercial venues demand, to get airplay, though there is a double meaning to the song. It is a four-part saga between two characters: the Iceman and 7 Bill $ man. The 7 Bill $ man’s songs on the CD are entitled the 7 Bill $ man and Rivals. The Iceman’s songs are, of course, the Iceman and the Iceman Antarctic Breeze, which is meant to be an epic battle between two superpowers.” 4542; www.incredibleflow.com

APPLICATION ANTARCTICA DOWNLOAD FORM by Seht (2006)

New Zealand’s one-man electronica/ambient band (aka Stephen Clover) carries a one note drone, entitled Antarctica Download, for ten minutes too long (the length of the track). www.cpsip.co.nz

VERUCA SALT IV by Veruca Salt (2006)

Originally formed in Chicago in the early 1990s, the current edition of the band is Los Angeles-based and is led by co-founder Louise Post. Antarctica gets a fleeting mention as a reflection of eternity in the track Salt Flat Epic: “Pacific Ocean’s way too small for both of us to swim, Antarctica will have to thaw for us to meet again, and I respect the all of what is fair and worthy. And I will never feel this way about another person and will never feel this way again.” Sympathy Records; www.verucasalt.com

MY LIFE IN BLACK AND WHITE by Cloudy Skies (2005)

Based in Portland, Oregon, Cloudy Skies is a loud, dynamic rock & roll bar band with Celtic, country and sea shanty influences. One of the tracks is called Shackleton, with a biting reference to the Boss, but no other Antarctic connections. Sample lyrics: “Well he’s taking these shots just like he’s Jack Dempsey and he’s poking his ice like he thinks he’s Shackleton and he’s hoping maybe he’ll catch her eye. And it seems to me she’s got a pretty face but there’s a viper underneath that satin and lace and I’m praying he makes it out alive.” www.mylifeinblackandwhite.com; www.myspace.com/mylifeinblackandwhite

ANTARCTICA by Antarctica (2005) (Vinyl LP only)

Matt Schwartz is a London, U.K.-based composer and producer of dance music who uses various group names, both alone and with collaborators, including Antarctica, a co-project with Mark Gilbert. The two tracks on this LP include Antarctica Sun Version and Antarctica Original Mix, hard-hitting tub thumpers, great for listening to on iPods when trekking out on the Ice. DEST12DJX01; www.destined-records.com

ANTARCTICA by Equinox/SURVIVAL by Kensal Rise (2006) (Vinyl LP only)

Drums & Bass music from a British club music label. The multi-faceted 9-minute track Antarctica captures well the harsh winds, blizzards and moods of The Ice. The cover photo has an interesting, smudged map outline of the continent. Inperspective Records INP13; www.inperspectiverecords.com

ANTARCTICA by the Bedford Incident (2005)

The Sheffield, U.K.-based light rock band has the track Antarctica on their 5-song minidisc. The lyrics seem to be as concerned with global freezing as with warming: “How cold can it be, when it drops to -3º?... Global warmth of ice age, fur lined gilded cage…One day we will be in Antarctica. It will be just like in prehistory. There’ll be lots of snow with nowhere left to go. We must keep warm to be the last life form.” High Rise Records; www.thebedfordincident.co.uk

NATURAL WONDERS OF THE WORLD IN DUB by Zion Train (2005)

Zion Train is a London, U.K.-based dub/dance reggae group, formed in 1990 and popular in the alternative- underground club scene. This CD is a reissue of the original 1994 vinyl LP, with tracks named after various significant world-wide natural formations or sites, which the group had read about or visited. Included is the track Ross Ice Shelf, which could well be the world’s only reggae tribute to Antarctica’s major ice shelf, often compared in size to France. Group member (Neil) Perch told us in 2008 that “The sheer beauty of the place inspired us.” The liner notes describe the Shelf as “around 500 miles long and almost as wide. This vast free floating iceberg was named after the British Explorer James Clark Ross who found it in 1841. In places the ice reaches a thickness of 2000 feet.” The track percolates and bubbles along crisply, underlain by the requisite heavy bass. Universal Egg Records WWCD005R; www.wobblyweb.com/zt

WATER SPHERE by Pilot Drift (2005)

The Texarkana, Texas group has a wide ranging sound on the CD, spanning from hard rock to the theatrical. Included is Elephant Island, a very dramatic song about Shackleton’s Endurance Expedition. It starts as folk song, changing to a heavy rock chorus, with further verses in a waltz tempo and then moving to circus-like calliope music. The group’s singer and songwriter, Kelly Carr told us that “the reason/motivation for that song is two things really. First, it was a story that was very inspirational to my father, that he passed down to me. Second, it’s a story that I could relate to in the context of the Christian faith. Shackleton, like Christ, was the sole purpose that all his men survived. A situation that is so dire, most people would have given up. But the men’s faith in Shackleton’s leadership and his word enabled them to press on when it all seemed impossible. I picture myself waiting on Elephant Island, my leader I believe in, saying that he will return for me. There are parallel struggles with that voice in one’s head that doubts, starts rationalizing chances. But it comes back to faith. Sure enough, Shackleton (like Christ), returns like he said he would, rescuing all of them. If they didn’t believe, they would have died.”

Lyrics: “Scratch one more dash on the bow of the boat, as nineteen months forces pride down our throats. Throw another dog on the fire. Try not to think of your desires. Seasons change but the days look the same. Our faces age as our beards grow in shame. Insanity’s eyes creeps up with a laugh, when Hurley almost lost the photographs. Listen men, keep your eyes to the sun, who melts the ice caps away. Hey! Hey! Hey! Hold tight to the Captain’s words of Shackleton’s Return. A year and a half drifting in the Weddell Sea, Endurance froze and sank, we left in no luxury. We rowed our way to Elephant Island. He left to find the whaler’s helping hand. We drank up the wine trying to pass up the time. We raise up our glass for today is our last. The band begins the dark circus parade, as spirits of all the crew men now fade. When that tugboat neared, Shackleton stood up tall on its bow calling, “Are you all well?!” to which was answered, “All safe, Boss, All well!”” Good Records GRR 007; www.pilotdrift.com

THE SUNLANDIC TWINS by of Montreal (2005)

Led by Kevin Barnes, this Georgia, U.S.A.-based group combines a light, melodic pop sound with darker lyrics over numerous CDs. This one has the track Wraith Pinned to the Mist and Other Games. While not a polar song, it has the catchy, nihilistic chorus repeated throughout the song: “Let’s pretend we don’t exist, Let’s pretend we’re in Antarctica.” Polyvinyl Record Co. PRC-088; www.ofmontreal.net

THE COMPLETE NATIONAL ANTHEMS OF THE WORLD Volume 3 (2005)

This is a collection of eight CDs of national anthems, played by the Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra, arranged and conducted by Peter Breiner. The French Southern and Antarctic Lands (which include the sub-Antarctic Îles Kerguelen, Crozet and Amsterdam plus Terre Adélie, the continental part of Antarctica historically claimed by France) are represented by La Marseillaise, which is the French anthem. We note that no other sub-Antarctic Islands or continental parts claimed by other nations are represented by national anthems in the set. The liner notes state that, “From time to time, the general idea gains currency that national anthems are nowadays an anachronism. According to the critics’ arguments, these anthems were the product of a period of awakening nationalism. Today, however, there is wide endeavour to overcome narrow, national ways of thinking and acting, with the great aim of promoting the peaceful community and union of nations, to realize which should be the first principle for politicians all over the world.” MARCO POLO 8.225321

DREAMWIND - EARLY YEARS ON MP3 by Dreamwind (2005)

Dreamwind is a Birmingham, Alabama electronic space music trio with over 166 CDs of digitally recorded instrumental improvisations, played with numerous synthesizers and bass. This compilation has the percolating ambient track Colonial Antartica. www.broadjam.com/dreamwind

GRAVE NEW WORLD by Antarctica vs. the World (2005)

Heavy metal punk music by a now disbanded New Orleans group. Ominous band name but no Antarctic titles on the CD. According to a group website, they form “a union that thrives on terror and revels in horror. They destroy the crowd and themselves, and they leave a scar of blood and pain in their wake.” Tent-05; www.tentcityrecords.com

LOST ELECTRICTY by missAntarctica (2005)

Intriguing name for the British-Dutch group but there are no Antarctic songs on this CD of U2-ish melodic but dark rock. Island 987 436-7; www.missantarctica.com

EGYPTIAN REGISTER by Gilt Trip (2005)

This is a very melodic CD of instrumental music from an Australian trio, with the suitably mysterious and eerie track The Arctic Antarctic. www.karmichit.com.

NORTH ATLANTIC DRIFT by Tena Palmer (2005)

Tena Palmer is an Ottawa-based singer/songwriter, whose talents range from jazz to folk and blues. She was the former vocalist with Ottawa’s Celtic jazz quartet, Chelsea Bridge, which won as best new Canadian group at the 1993 Montreal Jazz Festival. The present disc includes her forlorn Christmas in Antarctica, “It’s Christmas in Antarctica but no one seems to know. The same old scene, all white and clean, the same old snow. Another endless summer’s sunny day and night, no need for Christmas lights of red, gold and green. None of the penguins or seals ever heard of Bethlehem or know the angel’s words, still they have peace on earth. It’s Christmas in Antarctica, for what it’s worth.” TLP-001; www.tenapalmer.com

INNOCENCE by Ken Davis (2005)

Australian Ken Davis is well known for his instrumental music for relaxation and environmental awareness. The present disc of piano solos includes includes Theme For Antarctica, which, Ken told us, “was named as I have always had a fascination for Antarctica and intend in the next couple of years of going there on one of the expeditions they run from Australia through Australian Geographic Magazine Tours. The killing of the baby seals was finally outlawed and I’ve got footage from Greenpeace that would make anyone sick of the clubbing of baby seals as on the cover of the CD. So it is an Innocent Animal. I hope this has helped you understand. I am an environmentalist and a lover of nature and will always do what I can to prevent the culling of Baby Seals, Whales and Dolphins. Especially Minke Whales that are being hunted by the Japanese for so called ‘scientific’ studies. If you have looked into the eye of a huge humpback whale, as I have on several occasions, you would understand to kill these magnificent harmless creatures is a crime against humanity.” KDM1035 D; www.kendavismusic.com

SOUL NATURE by Tim Osborne (2005)

Washington State Osborne’s piano-based orchestrated New Age music includes the soothing Chapel of the Snows, about the Chapel at the U. S. Antarctic base, McMurdo Station. Tim spent two years in Antarctica with the U.S. Navy. He was a co-founder and tuba player for the Ross Island Brass, which was the only band of its kind on the continent. After eleven years in the Navy, Tim decided it was time to settle down and focus on his music. Tim told us, “On nice clear days the chapel was the perfect place to see spectacular views of the Transantarctic Mountains, particularly beautiful at the beginning of the summer season when the sun is still low in the sky. If I was lucky I would see Weddell seals and their pups and even a penguin or two. The chapel was always quiet, and with that marvelous view, made a perfect atmosphere for inspiration. Along with the view, I will always remember the wonderful friends I made while in Antarctica. I intend to return to Antarctica in the future.” Antarctic Music AM-052305; www.antarcticmusic.com

GRADUATION by Lagoon (2005)

Tucson’s rockers include the moody Arctic Antarctic on their debut CD. Singer-guitarist David Ziegler-Voll told us a relative “was going through some tough times and her doctor thought she might be bi-polar; hence the title Arctic/Antarctic. The song deals with my perspective about her situation living in a big cold empty house alone.” www.lagoononline.com

WORDLESS RHYMES by Dave Nachmanoff (2005)

Californian Nachmanoff has been British light rocker/troubador Al Stewart’s guitarist in recent years. On this disc he includes a reggified instrumental version of Stewart’s Antarctica. (See LAST DAYS OF THE CENTURY by Al Stewart - (1988, reissued 1997) in this section below) Troubador Records TR009; www.davenach.com

HAPPY ALL THE TIME by Jake (2005)

British Columbia resident Jake Differ’s second CD of songs in a variety of styles, for children, includes the swaying Antarctic Soirée. “ Gonna rent a tuxedo, A pair of winter boots, A pocket full of jelly beans, And a bag of frozen fruit, Fish sticks by the seaside, Maybe then a little dip - Perhaps take in a light show, From some distant passing ship. Goin’ to a penguin party, Antarctic soirée, Those penguins really throw a great party, Antarctic soirée. On a floating piece of ice, That’s driftin’ in the sea, Lay back, enjoy the stars, And changing scenery. Goin’ to a penguin party, Antarctic soirée, Those penguins really throw a great party, Antarctic soirée. We’re slippin’ and slidin’, We’re dancin’ penguin style, Put your wrists down to your ankles, Just wobble ‘round and smile. I doubt that you can hear us, We’re so very far away, where no one pays us any mind, It’s here I want to stay.” MBJ-002; www.musicbyjake.com

WHICH WAY by Dan Junk (2005)

Florida musician Dan Junk includes a light guitar-based instrumental, Antarctica, in this jazzy/blues/rock CD of instrumentals and vocal tracks. Hazz Cat-Records 7049; www.danjunk.com

FOUND IN THE FLOOD by The Bled (2005)

Tucson, Arizona’s heavy metal rockers have included the track Antarctica, where “nothing lives here and no one comes here anymore”. Vagrant VR413; www.thebledsite.com

The music from DRAWING RESTRAINT 9 by Björk (2005)

Icelandic vocalist and recording persona Björk has provided the largely instrumental soundtrack to Matthew Barney’s conceptual allegorical film about a Japanese whaling ship with its cargo of a sculpture of liquid vaseline. At film’s end the ship is on its way through icebergs towards Antarctica. The last track on the CD is Antarctic Return, played on the sho, one of Japan’s oldest instruments, consisting of multiple reeds and pipes. One Little Indian OLI459; www.bjork.com

OPEN SEASON by British Sea Power (2005)

Widely heralded rising British rock group has written a melodic tribute to the melting and break up of the Antarctic Peninsula’s Larsen Ice shelf, Oh Larsen B. Lyrics include “You’re fractured and cold but your heart is unbroken, My favourite foremost coastal antarctic shelf. Oh Larsen B, oh you can fall on me. Oh Larsen B, desalinate the barren sea…. You had twelve thousand years, and now it’s over, five hundred billion tonnes of the purest pack ice and snow, Oh Larsen B, oh won’t you fall on me, Oh Larsen B, desalinate the barren sea”. A representative of the band told us that Yan, the composer, explained that “he has a great interest in ice related topics and wanted to write a love song to Larsen B.” Rough Trade TRA 30056-2

WHITE COLD DAYS by various artists (2005)

This CD includes six tracks by musicians of three rock groups, who met in Antarctica. Two of the tracks, while not about Antarctica, were recorded there in Dark Ice Studios, B-121, at McMurdo Station, the main American scientific base. LVG 001; www.livingnightengale.com

WORLD OUT OF BALANCE by Bill McGee (2005)

McGee, based in North Carolina, takes us around the globe with his synthesizer on this instrumental CD, which includes the track, Antarctica. He told us: “The inspiration to write Antarctica came to me towards the completion of World Out of Balance, which simply and hopefully, the CD title makes one agree that the state of geological destruction our world is in (at present), is getting to the point of no return, and such a beautiful continent as Antarctica has suffered enough with her violent weather, and now her atmosphere above is becoming more and more unprotected with the depletion of the Ozone. Hence the track: Hole in the Sky. I tried to write all of these tracks to make one realize there’s beauty left all around us, if we will allow it in and leave it well alone. As a child, and even now, to watch a documentary on this continent gets my complete undivided attention, as it should with everyone. I most definitely would love to visit there someday. I tried to write this song (through my mind’s eye) to make the listener feel as though they were travelling above the iced plains, (whichever means you choose), her circular sunsets, and the touch of her cold beauty - something to make you want to warm up to, if you will. I hope you have enjoyed the song as much as I did writing it, and I hope with this little bio on it I’ve written, you have seen in your thoughts what I’ve seen, and even now as I listen to it, occasionally, it takes me there.” Composure Music E1F6D3

HARD by Dying is Easy (2004)

Atlanta-based Chris Windham is a solo electronic artist with many CDs of industrial/ambient instrumental music. This CD is a reissue of his first album in 2000 and has the track Antarctica, which combines windswept synthesizer passages with drumbeats trying to break through the bleakness. Chris told us in 2008 that “the sound of the song as a whole reminded me of desolation and coldscapes and I figured the name fit perfectly”. Bebop Records BEBOP001; www.dyingiseasy.net

DOUBLE REDUNDANCY by Einstein’s Little Homunculus (2004)

This double CD is a re-release of two albums originally recorded live in 1993 and 1995 by classmates and friends at the University of Rochester, N. Y. According to the band’s website, its folksy, acoustic music is a “mixture of slightly skewed original songs and rockin’ arrangements of jigs, reels, and other melodies from the British Isles and beyond.” Included is the track Antarctica from the 1995 sessions. The group’s Paul Crook told us in 2008 that “I wrote Antarctica in 1983, when I was 16 years old. We had just studied the continent in school, and I was trying to envision an Antarctic tourism campaign. “Penguins and glaciers and love” was the best I could do at the time. Many years later (1990), one of my roommates went to McMurdo Station to engage in atmospheric research, and I was able to exchange satellite-relayed E-mail with him while he was there. That’s about as close as I’ve gotten to visiting, besides a trip to Dunedin, New Zealand, five years ago (where I saw penguins in their native waters for the first time).” Lyrics for this upbeat 1-minute ditty are: “Antarctica, Antarctica, a place where you want to be, Antarctica, Antarctica, it’s made out of frozen sea, Antarctica, Antarctica, we’re all gonna have a blast, Antarctica, Antarctica, an icy breath of the past, Antarctica, Antarctica, come down with your kids and your wife, Antarctica, Antarctica, you can ski for the rest of your life, Antarctica, Antarctica, you can’t be too sure about gold, Antarctica, Antarctica, but you know that your beers’ll be cold, Antarctica, Antarctica, ain’t got much industrial stuff, Antarctica, Antarctica, just penguins and glaciers and love.” Accordion School Music AS-0300; www.elh.org

THE NAVY LARK Series Two Volume 1 (2004)

The Navy Lark, the longest running comedy program in British radio history, was a concoction about the antics of the crew of HMS Troutbridge, on the BBC airwaves from March 1959 to July 1977 with 15 series. This box set of six CDs contains the first fourteen episodes from October 1959 to January 1960 (three of which are missing from BBC archives and from this collection but include the scripts). It includes episode 9, The Charter Trip to Antarctica, in which a local Geographical Society charters the Royal Navy ship Troutbridge for the trip to Antarctica and which, of course, goes off track. The program theme music was composed by harmonica virtuoso Tommy Reilly and by James Moody. BBC Audio; www.bbcshop.com; (See also NAVY LARK Series 4 Volume 2 (2008) and NAVY LARK Series 18 (2006) in this section.)

FAKE OUR DEATHS by Deloris (2004)

The Melbourne, Australia-based rock band, formed in 1999, has the track Local Antarctica on their fourth CD. One of the verses of the enigmatic song is: “Under stars of pale cold tin, one century passed to leave only clues and hints of a local Antarctica, a whole complete secret sea flowing inches from our feet…We talked like actors, we spoke like kings about the cheap things that we thought we did, never letting on that the ringing for the end was in the doorbells of our friends.” We asked Marcus Teague, the songwriter and principal band member about the lyrics. He told us that “the song is about growing up, and attempting to take in the naivety and innocence of your childhood before responsibilities and ‘adulthood’ kick in. I guess the ‘Antarctica’ in the song is used as a metaphor to suggest the hidden ‘mass’ of the timeline in the narrative. In the song, a town is described as the setting for this adolescent period. Towards the end of the song it’s alluded that there’s a ‘secret sea’ underneath it, and growing, which alludes to the secrets and division that creep up on you as your childhood slips away, and also to the fact that something huge is happening that no one can quite grasp - the elephant in the corner, if you like. It’s as if the town/time is reverting to an Antarctica-like land mass, one of vast distance, space, weight and density, too complex to completely understand or explain. I hope that doesn’t sound too pretentious. But that was the idea.” Dot Dash Recordings DASH001CD; www.delorisband.com; www.myspace.com/delorisband

ANGEL’S SHARE by Ian Tamblyn (2004)

Ian Tamblyn is a veteran Ottawa-area musician, playwright and educator/guide on nature cruise ships, who has made trips to both the Arctic and Antarctic regions. This CD of melodic folk songs is largely dedicated to the wonders of the northern Canadian outdoors. One of the most poignant tracks, Arc of Dreams and Prayers, sets the mood for humility in the face of nature: “Too big, too white, too much, my eyes can’t take in it all, Brilliant light, breathe in and dive, glide, glance, fall…The sounding whale, the albatross that carves an endless blue and something in the distance that is calling, calling you...The flume, the wing, the fluke, the thing that calls you to this place is bounded in our innocence, our wonder and our grace.” One of the songs is Paradise Bay, about one of the most scenic and visited sites on the Antarctic Peninsula: “White on blue, blue on white, Take your breath away, Watching the unfolding, Down in Paradise Bay. Blue on white, white on blue, Words are stripped away, Or seek redefinition down in Paradise Bay. Look at those mountains, Look at those whales in the sea, Something is happening, Something is happening to me. White on blue, blue on white, Don’t have much to say, ‘Cept I’m going deep down with them, Down in Paradise Bay.” North Track Records NT-25; www.tamblyn.com

LUMINARIA by Ian Moore (2004)

Ian Moore is a veteran Texan guitarist/singer-songwriter, now living in Seattle, Washington. His CD of thoughtful, melodic, mellow songs has the tribute track Sir Robert Scott. Lyrics: “Well Sir Robert Scott did someone break your heart, and send you on out in the cold, to the ends of the world on a Manchurian pony? Four men who believed every word that you said. Sir Robert Scott you’re a different sort and you had the whole world on your back. You carried that load like a good Christian soul to plant England’s flag deep in the Antarctic soil. But somebody beat you and now you don’t know. You say “My god, my god has left me behind, forsaken, forgotten in this ice and this snow, I’m getting weaker and I will not write anymore.” Sir Robert Scott you set back for your ship, for your men they were hungry and tired, and you’re not to blame for the blizzard that came eleven miles out from your food and your bed. Sir Robert Scott lay your head down to sleep, it’s ten years that are wasted and gone. Lay down for a while let the warmth overcome you and wait for the summer to come, because that’s when they’ll come back around. You say “My god, my god has left me behind, forsaken, forgotten in this ice and this snow. I’m getting weaker and I will not write anymore.” Yep Roc Records YEP 22083; www.ianmoore.com

POLOSUR CELESTE by Marcelo Aedo (2004)

Aedo is a leading Chilean fusion bass player and multi-instrumentalist as well as composer, producer and teacher. His first CD of melodic and subdued jazz instrumentals contains the 6½ minute track Polosur (South Pole), a multi-faceted electric bass solo. Petroglyph Records PR-00312; www.marceloaedo.scd.cl

ULTIMATE TRANQUILITY (2004)

This double CD of themed instrumental New Age music, written by Stewart and Bradley James and performed by Hypnosis, includes the moody track Antarctica. Double Gold LMM 1702282

NO FRILLS by Amanda Kay (2004)

Amanda Kay is a Cairns, Australia-based singer/songwriter, performing throughout Australia. She became interested in music while working in Antarctica and her CD contains the track Mawson in Antarctica. She told us, “I wrote the song on my return voyage from Mawson Station in 1997. I went down to Mawson to see a place that not many people go to, to experience the extremes of the earth and to see Emperor penguins. I also wanted to be the first woman carpenter in Antarctica and spent the winter down there working as a senior carpenter. It was a hard year for me. This was the first song I’d ever written and learnt guitar out of a book whilst down there. Returning on the ‘Aurora Australis’, I saw the first new faces I’d seen for a month. Many of the people studying were on the ship and were talented musicians. They were the first to play the song with me and have given me a strong will to continue with music and creating my own stuff.” Sample lyrics, describing the tough experiences: “Why am I here so lost and so lonely, Standing outside and dancing alone, Tired of things moving around me, Mawson in Antarctica, Dale is my friend but there hard to come by, I growl too much and scare them away, I search horizons looking for rescue, Please help me now and take me away, Davis is close but too far to get to, I try to call but still feel alone, I don’t ring my family I would upset them, I’ve locked my own door and thrown away the key, I’m going home now is this my rescue, I’ve lost parts of my soul in the cold, Where will I go to, how have I changed? This is a lesson hard to explain.” www.kmusic.com.au

ANTARCTICA by the Secret Handshake (2004)

This is an acoustic solo pop CD by Luis Dubuc of Dallas, Texas. Despite the title, there aren’t any direct Antarctic songs on the disc. However, Luis told us, “Basically, the album has that sort of feeling, to it. Very desolate and stripped down. It wasn’t a conscious decision to name it that beforehand, but when I was sitting with the songs, it just seemed like a great way to sum up the songs with one word. Plus I’ve always had a mild fascination with Antarctica and the romantic ideals of any cold, desolate but beautiful place. I have another music project I named Eskimo Songs for the same kind of reason, I guess.” www.thesecrethandshake.net

ACOUSTIC GESTURES by Az Samad (2004)

Az Samad, a finger-style acoustic guitarist and composer-performer from Malaysia, was a student at Berklee College of Music in Boston when he recorded this solo instrumental disc. It includes the soothing Antartika, about which he writes in the liner notes: “I spelled it right. That’s how it’s spelled in Malay. I’ve always liked the feeling of snow, ice and the wind blowing into your face. This tune came about when I was trying to learn Dixie McGuire by Tommy Emmanuel. I don’t really remember that song but I’m glad it inspired this tune.” www.cdbaby.com

LIFEBLOOD by Manic Street Preachers (2004)

The Welsh band was formed in the late 1980s and has been known as a politically inspired, wild band with a loyal following. The Japanese edition of the CD features the bonus track Antarctic, with the lyrics, “As our bodies fall apart, left to the dust and bones, all we have is the fear, we’ll never carry you home. So hold all the reflections, baby it won’t hurt much, where did the feeling go, it feels like the Antarctic.” Sony Music Japan International Inc. EICP 435; www.manicstreetpreachers.com

LE MONDE ELECTRONIQUE DE FRANÇOIS DE ROUBAIX (2004) (THE ELECTRONIC WORLD OF FRANÇOIS DE ROUBAIX)

François de Roubaix (1939-1975) was a French multi instrumentalist, who was building a major reputation as a TV and film composer until his death in a diving accident. He experimented in combining acoustic instrumentation with the newly developing synthesizers of the early 1970s. According to the liner notes, in 1974 he was contacted by the well known Jacques-Yves Cousteau, the commander of the Calypso, to compose music for his Antarctic documentary, Voyage to the End of the World. The resulting original electro-acoustic music was rejected at the screening of the first episode by Cousteau, a musical conservative, who selected pieces by classicist Maurice Ravel. The full 23 minutes of unedited music is presented for the first time in this compilation CD. The titles of the seven tracks include Antarctica, Encounter with the Skua, Penguins on the Ice Floe, Dive in the Ice, Overflight, Whales and Farewell Antarctica. Universal Music 981 808 9; www.francoisderoubaix.com

GUITARLIGHT by Attila Jelinek (2004)

(Horst) Attila is a Hamburg, Germany based professional multi-instrumentalist. His current CD, which has an Adventure Network/ Patriot Hills, Antarctica crest on the cover, with penguins, icebergs and polar bears, is a blend of upbeat rock music, with a track, Antarctica, that has a heavy chant like Middle East flavour to it. Attila told us, “I am from Germany and Germany is a very little country, too many people and little place to live...and so I dream of big country Antarctica, where there is much space.” www.freenet-homepage.de/guitarlight/referenzen.html

AMAZONICA by Bobby Brazil (2004)

While there are no liner notes in this CD of Brazilian New Bossa (Nova), samba and dance music, Bobby Brazil is, however, reported to be a collective of musicians out of Nuremberg specializing in this genre. All the vocals are performed in Portuguese by Viviane de Farias. The tropical sounds include the steamy vocal/instrumental track Brahma vs. Antarctica. We are assuming that the title track refers to the 1999 Brazilian beer war/merger when one leading brewer, Brahma, acquired the other, Antarctica, with its popular brand of the same name. Brigade Nouveau Records BN 002-2; www.brigadenouveau.com

SAGITTA - HELLO WORD by Sagitta (2004)

Sagitta is a Korean folk-rock duo with a double disc package of CD with DVD of the song tracks. Included is the spooky, sitar-driven song Night of Antarctic, with its scary video: “…Once had a dream about a body exhausting love, once had a dream about a soul burning song, but in the bitter cold at the end of the world, both of them are frozen to sleep in solitary ice.” Beatball Superstars-3; www.beatballrecords.com

THE NEW BLACK by the Antarcticans (2004)

The Pasadena/Los Angeles group is described in their web promo material as “sad dark Slave-Ghost Draculas!” While sadly, their CD has no Antarctic-themed tracks, we had to ask them the reason for their name. Guy Valdez, guitarist, told us, “Wow! Antarctica is cool. We just thought the name Antarcticans was a very cold and desolate sounding name. And we wanted a name that reflects our sound. And it sounds cool.” www.theantarcticans.com

OAK OR ROCK by Phonophani (2004)

Norwegian Espen Sommer Eide has a track called Blind Birds of the Antarctic on this instrumental CD of experimental synthesizer electronica and sampled sounds. He told us “I collect good titles in a small book I carry with me. So I must have come across this one by chance somewhere. I will try to remember where. But as you understand, it is the music being made first and then the title added. So it is not motivated by Antarctica, but somehow I thought that the title fit the track perfectly!” Rune Grammofon RCD 2038; www.alog.net/phonophani/pp.html

TECHNOCLUB NEXT by various artists (2004)

This German double CD of trance/techno dance music includes Antarctic Rain by Two Roads, one of the slightly quieter cuts. Universal Music 060249823823-3; www.technoclub.tc

SEÑALES Y RUIDOS by Delta Cero (2004)

Chill-out/dance electronica from Spain includes the instrumental track Antarctica DC, 064271. FAL-042 LU-106-04; www.falcatruada.com; www.electromancer.com

WISCONSIN DAWN by Mark Bruland (2004)

Wisconsin-based Bruland is an organic farmer on his 46 acres as well as a musician. This New Age instrumental CD of various well-played themes includes the peaceful and serene piano-based Antarctic Night. Mark told us that “Antarctica and I really go back about 20 years to a time when I was working for Hill’s Science Diet pet food, in Los Angeles, CA. Our company helped sponsor Will Steiger's Trans-Antarctica dogsled journey then. We made some special high-calorie dog food (looked like brown bricks) and had them staged along his route so that whenever he would camp, he would have a pallet of this stuff waiting for him. Glad to say he DID make the trip successfully and never lost a dog! But I digress...When I write my songs, I use a technique similar to an artist who paints on canvas. I begin with a “voice” on my Yamaha keyboard that I am “in the mood for” at the time and begin recording. I build on that first sound or feeling and eventually a whole song comes together with the help of my digital 8-track studio. After I recorded this piece, I envisioned a wind-swept frozen place on earth (probably stimulated by our Wisconsin winters and the winds coming down from Minnesota and Saskatchewan). Antarctica came into my mind’s eye. And I thought about a broadcast that is currently on the Internet from Antarctica. Are you familiar with it? I think it would be VERY cool to have that song actually broadcast from Antarctica. Anyway, I pictured the long dark nights and very short days there, the wind blowing across the ice, and a lonely radio

station broadcasting from there when I named the song.” Mark Bruland Music

THE DEATHSHIP HAS A NEW CAPTAIN by the Vision Bleak (2004)

This is an operatic heavy metal concept album performed by Germans Schwadorf & Konstanz, with songs of death, doom and horror. Included is the track Horror of Antarctica, with references to the bizarre in the Antarctic literature of Edgar Allan Poe and H. P. Lovecraft: “Within the shadow of the arctic mounts of ice, night had veiled the pole and darkness filled the sky. The air was so cold – cutting our skin. Freezing voices called us and the winter winds did sing: “Tekeli-li, Tekeli-li” through the night. What ghoulish creatures brought ‘em forth? What sphere had opened wide? “Tekeli-li, Tekeli-li” through the air. Where it did lead us to, no mortal man should dare. Right before our eyes of monolithic size, one labyrinth of cities – draped in moonlight – did arise. Leading to the icy ruins a long forbidden site. Built by horror creatures from beyond our spheres of light.” PRO 066; www.the-vision-bleak.de

ALKALINE by Ben McAllister (2004)

Seattle-based McAllister, a rocker and film/TV composer, has a warbly track entitled Under Antarctic Ice. He told us that “I’m influenced very much by a guitarist named Henry Kaiser who, in addition to being an excellent player, is a diving instructor. He received a grant from the American National Science Foundation in 2002 and lived in Antarctica for some months. I saw videos of his dives and was inspired to name the track, but it was named after it was recorded - it sounded like being under the ice to me! You may be interested in him as well - www.henrykaiser.net is his website.” www.listenfaster.com

LATITUDE by Groundtruther (2004)

Improvised jazz by a New York-based group led by guitarist Charlie Hunter and drummer Bobby Previte. With the theme of the globe’s major latitudes, the CD includes two tracks entitled Antarctic Circle and South Pole. Thirsty Ear THI 57150.2; www.thirstyear.com; www.charliehunter.com; www.bobbyprevite.com

THE MUSIC OF THE CURABLE INTERNS Arranged For Solo Guitar by the Curable Interns (2004)

Louisiana guitarist Kenneth Johnston recorded these largely live instrumental tracks in 1986 in a variety of styles including blues, rock, gamelan and middle eastern. One of the tracks is the short dirge-like Antarctic Pyramid, which Kenneth told us, “was inspired by the Howard Phillips Lovecraft story “At the Mountains of Madness”, which tells the story of a scientific expedition to Antarctica that discovers the ruins of an ancient civilization of non-human beings that existed on earth from Pre-Cambrian days. The expedition finds the frozen bodies of large creatures resembling something from the sea cucumber family, which, of course, come to life when thawed out and cause some messy problems. There is also another, more malevolent life form lurking in the tunnels. Although probably influenced by Poe’s “Arthur Gordon Pym”, “Mountains” inspired the classic movie versions of “Who Goes There?” aka “The Thing”, and more recently the cheesy B movie “Alien vs. Predator”. Who knows what secrets lie buried under the ice?” www.curableinterns.com

ANTARCTICA by Angus Coull (2004)

Surprisingly, in