This album emerges from a long-term sonic and ethnographic exploration of the Étang de Berre, a vast coastal lagoon near Marseille marked by centuries of industrial pollution and hydrological disruption. Recorded between 2021 and 2024, the work captures the fragile tensions between human activity and more-than-human life.

 

These recordings access the hidden sonic dimensions of contamination and survival. Moving beyond conventional documentation, Bullock and Silva deploy a range of recording techniques as tools of inquiry, probing beneath the surface and beyond the limits of ordinary perception. Hydrophones submerged in the lagoon register its disrupted underwater acoustics; ultrasonic detectors translate the ephemeral signals of bat colonies inhabiting ruins and industrial peripheries; parabolic microphones single out buzzing industrial technophonies and biophonies. 

By weaving together these threads, Plume focuses attention on the lived textures and atmospheric weight of a heavily impacted zone. It proposes listening as a mode of sensing the deep entanglement of human industry and more-than-human resilience. It frames listening as a way to inhabit the instability, uncertainty, and unresolved futures that persist across an altered ecology.

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