New Album, Sounds Of The Unborn, Recorded From Inside The Womb

Sacred Bones Records has announced a new album, Sounds of the Unborn, that explores the sonification of prenatal sensor data.

It is described as “the first album created by a person while they were still inside the womb.”

The album is attributed to Luca Yupanqui, but was recorded before she was born.

Sounds of the Unborn was made with biosonic MIDI technology with the help of her parents, Psychic Ills bassist Elizabeth Hart and Lee “Scratch” Perry collaborator Iván Diaz Mathé.

They created a ritual, using sensors hooked to Hart’s stomach to generate MIDI data, which was fed into Mathé’s synthesizers. After five hour-long sessions, the shape of an album began to emerge.

The duo then edited and mixed the results of the sessions, trying to intervene as little as possible.

The video for the first track V4.3 pt.2, embedded above, is based Super 8 footage created during the recording sessions, processed by video artist Victoria Keddie. Hart and Mathé describe the result as “a visual trip that summarizes what we felt while creating this album.”

Sounds Of The Unborn, and the MIDI Biodata Sonication Device used to create it, are available now to pre-order at the label site.

28 thoughts on “New Album, Sounds Of The Unborn, Recorded From Inside The Womb

    1. This. New genres to come. FiberDub. FapTrap. Hungerstep, with that grrrrowly bass. ItchScratch, because it feels so-so-s-s-so good. KnuckleBreaks, with that cracking sound.

  1. Very different! Galvanic conductance processed into MIDI, and the result realized with synthesizers. Initially I was expecting processed sounds from stethoscopes.

    1. Yeah not too impressed with the MIDI, 9 out of 10 ‘sonified science!’ projects like this turn out to be ‘assisted midi’ with a carefully chosen key, patch assignment etc. etc. which actually tells you nothing about the underlying phenomenon. It’s almost always a marketing schtick.

      Back in the 1970s there *were* recordings of ‘womb music’ made with stethoscopes, they were sold as something that could help a cranky baby relax. I have heard one and remember it quite well; it was notable for not being as rhythmic as I expected at the time (heart rate and breathing don’t line up neatly). There’s a lot of techno/trance stuff that’s pretty close to ‘body music’ and likely inspired by it.

  2. So did the unborn also program the synthesizers, recorded and processed the sounds with the extra effects and mixed everything together? The concept is interesting and the experiment laudable, but calling it an album created by an unborn is pretentious and clickbait-y at best…

  3. In the meanwhile, many composers that attended a conservatoire, many producers with years of experience and collaborations, many innovative indie and electronic musicians struggle to even have an interview with a label. This is just marketing. Music is a serious discipline, an art that requires theory and technique, not just “creativity”: this is truly humiliating. Almost as much as that “fart sounds” VST pack.

    1. Saying that you’re ‘humiliated’ by this is laying it on a little thick, don’t you think?

      When has success in music ever NOT involved balancing creativity and talent with novelty and marketing?

    2. “Music is a serious discipline, an art that requires theory and technique”

      I think millions of folk musicians around the world who’ve played music all their lives with no formal training, whose musicality and virtuosity many “trained” musicians can only hope to have, would beg to differ.

  4. Although I am not a fan of probably 75% of the music they put out, I love the aesthetic and ethos of the Sacred Bones label. They keep it interesting for sure.

    If the video is anything to go by, this vinyl could be awesome sampling fodder for anyone doing way out sci fi hip hop stuff.

  5. The Super 8 film combined with the subject of childbearing reminds me of the work of Stan Brakhage. No doubt he would approve, if he were unfortunate enough to still be alive.

    1. The First World is full of WAY more absurd things than this. This album, at least, is art and didn’t cost too much time and effort. Why are people so resentful of foetuses?

  6. As a husband of a pregnant wife, I assure you all this is not the vibe I’m experiencing. I’d say it’s more the sound of early 2000s hip hop, the ER theme song, as well as meditation and contemporary Christian music. Pretty sure I’m about to have a baby normie. Oh well I can deal with being the eccentric one. Not everyone can have an unborn baby produce an album.

  7. Why so much negativity about this concept? Personally, I love it. All the best to the parents when your baby is born. Love from Scotland.

  8. When that kid hits 18 they’ll say Mom, that’s my album and I want all the revenue from it right now. Pay up. And then turns mom in to CPS for child labor, child endangerment, child exploitation, negligent cruelty, public humiliation, and sues for damages.

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