This Earth Day, our digital press department has decided to honor the diversity of our planet’s biomes through the music we feel embodies such ecological spectacles. At UCLA Radio we understand that our planet is something to take care of and is responsible for all the pleasures we get to enjoy. Bask in the beauty of our Earth and celebrate all our planet has to offer through our department’s selection of musical parallels.
Rainforest: Sofia
Merriweather Post Pavillion by Animal Collective
Three years ago, I first listened to a group called Animal Collective — their album Merriweather Post Pavillion, to be specific. Immediately upon listening, I felt transported to another world. Ever since, I’ve envisioned some sort of mental journey through the rainforest whenever I come back to this album.
The first half of Merriweather Post Pavillion almost acts as a gradual descent through different layers of the rainforest. The first two songs, “In the Flowers” and “My Girls,” evoke a feeling of floating idly through the sky, seeing visions of mythological creatures dancing among the clouds — the colorful instrumentation and vocals by Avey Tare and Panda Bear mapping an imaginary sunset. “Also Frightened” opens with samples of animal coos and ceremonial drumming from the Bosavi people of Papua New Guinea, taking you down to ground level before humming vocals at the end of the song sing you to sleep: Excited and screaming, their voices grow wild / And rise with the birds mating up in the pines / Down to puddles that breathe, covered by leaves / With mud they’ll make prints on their backs. “Summertime Clothes” and “Daily Routine” are the songs you hear upon waking up from your descent — here, your journey continues; the two songs guide you through the day as you navigate the rainforest on your own, being greeted with local wildlife along the way. The ending of “Daily Routine,” however, quickly slows down towards the middle of the song. The existential echoes of the synth instrumentals push you into a body of water, which becomes the beginning of “Bluish.” Being the midway point in the album, “Bluish” is a quirky yet genuine love song accompanied by the sounds of swimming underwater.
The mental storyline that I envision ends here, but that doesn’t mean the rainforest-like setting fades. For instance, track 8, “Taste,” begins with an audio collage of frogs, crickets, and a rustling noise that seems like animals running through greenery nearby. Each track on Merriweather Post Pavillion has what feels like thousands of intricately placed samples and sounds. I found it so interesting for a group that uses predominantly electronic instruments to make an album that sounded so organic and “of the earth.” Animal Collective’s use of combining natural sounds with technology transports you, the listener, to a remote part of the rainforest — untouched by mankind.
Temperate Forest: Talia
Shadowland by Ora Cogan
I am probably biased, having first been entranced by Ora Cogan’s voice on a winding road somewhere in the fog-veiled redwoods of Northern California. Her 2016 album, Shadowland, insists on being experienced among trees. Produced in collaboration with Trish Klein of the Be Good Tanyas and sprinkled with ethereally covered tracks by the likes of Allen Toussaint and Buffy Sainte-Marie, Shadowland is the temperate rainforest of psychedelic folk and alt-country albums — if it can be confined to a genre.
Close your eyes and let Cogan’s floaty vocals, americana fingerpicking, and twangy banjo transport you to an isolated forest by the sea. The often subdued melodies and hazy synth give the album a dreamlike, haunted texture while her introspective and occasionally gutting lyrics are well-suited to the wisdom and obscurity of the forest. In the opening track, “Ground and Grave,” Cogan plays with the theme of death while baring herself in the midst of heartbreak: “I want to dance when I’m one foot in the grave and one on the ground / And I will still cry / Like you just left town.” Her crooning, sorrowful words are accompanied by an exploration of the unknown, the “shadowland” for which the album is named. In “Repatterning,” Cogan sings, “All your threadbare thoughts / They crystallize in the dark / To claim the space you forgot.” As with human emotion, the beauty of the forest often lies in the shadowy places.
Having confronted the grief of environmental destruction in her songwriting and in other art forms, Ora Cogan is a relevant artist to highlight for Earth Day. As a documentary filmmaker, she interviewed women of the Heiltsuk Nation near her hometown of Nanaimo, Canada about the disastrous implications of a proposed oil pipeline. As a photojournalist, she documented the defenders of old growth forests and exposed corporate loggers on Ditidaht and Pacheedaht lands. This Earth Day, as the urgent fight for environmental justice faces new challenges, we must look to those who use their artistic platforms to advocate for our Earth and its stewards and who creatively transport us to the beautiful places that remind us of why the fight matters.
Taiga: Becca
“Snow White” by Laufey
Laufey, jazz vocalist and musician that is creating her own path within the music industry. The classically trained musician from Iceland felt as though she had no proper place, so she made one for herself through blending her love for jazz, classical music and pop. Despite the voices in her head telling her she wasn’t good enough, she persevered with her musical career, producing songs like “Snow White,” about the societal expectations of women, the voices she battles in her head and how she views her self image or worth.
The music video for Snow White was filmed in the Taiga in Iceland. The Taiga is considered the world’s largest land biome, also called the boreal forest. It has harsh, long winters with short, sweet summers. The music video for Snow White is cinematically beautiful in every way. The incredible landscape of Iceland combined with lyrics really tug at your heart strings. Filming in Iceland with her twin sister Junia as the Creative Director feels like a full circle moment. The combinations of their visions come to life all while filming where they grew up. Collaborating with someone that fully understands who you are and the message you’re trying to portray is essential. Laufey is lucky enough to have a sister to work with while both are achieving their goals simultaneously.
The music video itself is very simplistic with just Laufey in a white gown in the beautiful natural landscape of Iceland. She uses one prop which is a mirror that she looks into singing: “They try to tell me, tell me I’m wrong. But the mirrors tell lies to me, my mind just plays along. The world is a sick place, at least for a girl.” She then follows by stating, “the people want beauty, skinny always wins and I don’t have enough of it, I’ll never have enough of it.” These are unfortunately all lines that we as women can relate to. Laufey is a fantastic songwriter, writing tunes that are deeply personal to her but her fans could relate to as well. She expresses her emotions and processes her past through her music, which also helps fans process what they’re going through in their personal lives. Society pushes these unrealistic norms onto us instead of looking at the beauty of being different from your peers. One of the many reasons Laufey has such dedicated fans is due to her authenticity throughout her career. Another line that is so poignant is “a woman’s currency’s her body not her brain.” These lyrics hit my body like a truck and I felt so overtaken and seen from these lyrics. Laufey has such a beautiful way of conveying her emotions through her music and processing it throughout it all. Snow White is such a tender tune due to the combination of the music and being filmed in the Taiga in Iceland.
Desert: Ava
The Dark Side of the Moon by Pink Floyd
When thinking of the desert, a range of things come to mind. I think of films such as Asteroid City, and the alien, otherworldly vastness the desert embodies. On the other hand, I think of classic rock songs dedicated to motor cycling around California and the cinematic Western experience. Ultimately, the supernatural spirit of the desert is most compelling to me, and the intersection of such themes landed me on a forever classic: The Dark Side of the Moon by Pink Floyd. Although the band’s English roots challenge the integrity of what Californian rock entails, the 1973 album embodies the definition of classic rock — capturing what I believe to be a part of the Californian experience: highways, pondering, and endless sandy plains.
Titles like “Brain Damage” remind me of Festival-goers and the experimental safety felt at major festivals in California deserts, such as Coachella Valley. More obviously, the iconic record employs supernatural and celestial motifs as a commentary on the monotonous lives we’re all meant to lead, the stages we experience, and the system within which we exist. The sheer vastness of desert views, the feeling of nothingness all around you, the sweltering heat, and the freezing nights all remind me of the solitary pondering we are left to when alone and feeling the grand scale our Earth and space has over us. The Dark Side of the Moon, as well as the sonics and lyricism of Pink Floyd’s entire discography, radiates the psychological, atmospheric, and experimental nature within us all.
The desert’s unearthly aesthetic draws on songs like “Money” and “Us and Them” which question the systems we’re forced to live within, our biases towards one another, and the morality of those in power. While such introspection is hard to access within the chaos and repetitious nature of our daily lives, Pink Floyd’s music and the desert both share the ability to remove ourselves from reality and immerse ourselves in life’s deepest questions and internal battles.
Freshwater: Levi
Cloud9 and Blue Garden by DreamWeaver
I first heard DreamWeaver while living in central Florida, a place dotted with hundreds of lakes, streams, wetlands, and springs. All day and night, this environment is totally teeming with life; the cicadas erupt into a deafening chorus every morning, the limpkin call echoes across the warm lakes, alligators bask on the wetland banks, and the manatees gently glide from spring to spring. To try and explain the diversity and density of life in freshwater environments goes far beyond this article, but it’s the biome that I call home and within which I spent many years of my childhood exploring.
DreamWeaver, hailing from Tokyo, Japan, illustrates this freshwater life through his music in such a way that when you close your eyes, sinking into his electronica sounds, you become the little bug drifting on a lily pad, or the crane listening to the crickets chirp late at night as you perch on a cypress branch. His sophomore album, Cloud9, imbues an electronica and drum n’ bass core sound with notes of the natural world. A nostalgic symphony of cicadas opens up “Hidden by Light” until it cascades into a breakbeat waterfall. Bug-like percussion and tingly little synthetic chirps construct the sounds of the swamp in “Dream Home Garden.” All throughout the album, a watery ambient synth flows downstream, bringing listeners along with it. Few albums paint a picture of the swamp quite as well as Blue Garden does, and I find myself listening to DreamWeaver most often when I miss home, when I miss the warm freshwaters and the millions of bugs, fish, birds, and other creatures I called my neighbors.
DreamWeaver has been a defining feature of my own radio show, Spaceship Earth, where I explore the different “soundtracks” for Earth’s biomes, because his music was the initial inspiration for the show’s conception. For me, Earth Day is incomplete without a DreamWeaver listening session, and I highly recommend his work for lovers of the Earth and electronic music.
Marine: Kiara
Midnight Sun by Zara Larsson
Over the past year, pop singer-songwriter Zara Larsson has practically become synonymous with the marine biome and the oceans, coral reefs, and sea creatures it entails. Larsson released her fifth studio album, Midnight Sun, in September of last year, with a visual and sonic aesthetic that saw her fully embracing the Rainbow Dolphin memes her hit song “Symphony” has long been associated with online. Midnight Sun embodies a Lisa Frank-esque vision of the marine biome, a world of water filled with glitter, bright colors, and all the hope and whimsy one could imagine. On the opening title track, Larsson confidently declares, “Summer isn’t over yet,” and every bold, groovy, beachy song after proves that to be true.
Water is vast, constantly moving, and constantly changing, features the album emulates beautifully through the wide range of joyous sounds that accompany Larsson’s voice. Such lively sonics are contrasted by Larsonn’s vulnerability: her innermost thoughts on all things love, femininity, and stardom. In the breathtaking ballad “Saturn’s Return,” she recalls her younger self, “I tried to control all that was unknown ‘cause I was scared.” However, Larsson, like the marine biome, is special because of all the untapped possibilities held within, and the growth she exhibits when belting, “And it feels so good to know I don’t know what I’m doing” makes it evident that the ocean is not just an aesthetic to her, but a lifestyle, one that invites change with open arms. As an artist, Zara Larsson has always been a sea of potential, but with Midnight Sun, she’s finally found herself diving headfirst into the deep blue, dancing with the dolphins, and pop music thanks her for it.
