Chris Watson at the High Seas - 7th Oct 2009

Chris Watson is a heavyweight in the avante garde world for his work with field recordings. A founding member of late '70s techno and synth-pop innovators Cabaret Voltaire and, later, ambient-industrial fusioners the Hafler Trio. In something of an odd switch, Watson left the music industry behind in the 1985 to work as a sound recordist for the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. He quickly branched out into production for film and television and has since handled field recording for a number of nature programs and documentaries, including David Attenborough's "The Life of Birds" which won him a BAFTA for best factual sound in 1998.
In 1996, after collecting hundreds of hours of location recordings from less accessible regions of the world, Watson returned to music production, releasing his first-ever solo album "Stepping into the Dark", on the Touch label. Actually a compilation of recordings of natural settings spanning from Inverness to Kenya to Venezuela to Cumbria, the release was lauded internationally and received an Award of Distinction at the Prix Ars Electronica Festival in Linz, Austria. His second album "Outside the Circle of Fire" was released in 1998 and "Weather Report" from 2003 was listed amongst the Guardian newspaper's "1000 albums to listen to before you die".
In 2006 he was awarded an honorary Doctor of Technology degree by the University of the West of England "in recognition of his outstanding contribution to sound recording technology, especially in the field of natural history and documentary location sound"

Performing here with Richard Francis and Rosy Parlane.
Many thanks to Jen French for documentation of event