Atmospheres and soundscapes. Sounds to sleep, relax and space- out to.

These recordings stem from Dan's field trips working around the Sahara desert from 1999-2003 armed with a minidisc recorder and a PZM microphone powered by a 9v battery.

The trips were taken around Dogon Country and Timbuktu working in villages in isolation promoting environmental protection and conservation with the NGO Walia. Recordings were made whilst sleeping under mosquito nets outside in the villages and whilst walking around talking and socialising with Malians.

At times including some sounds from backpacking around Ghana in 2001. A sprinkling of sound from Addis Ababa around 2004 whilst living in Ethiopia (city based so more music and less soundscape recordings were made there).

And further recorded during two of his return visits to Mali based in Bamako and the quiet suburb of Samé where his wife was raised on the outskirts.

The later made on a portable Tascam recorder from outside the studio Dan built in a rented house in the trees during the sessions that turned into the albums Bamako Sessions released on Riverboat Records and Dance To The Full Moon released on Arc Music. You can hear the waterfall and stream in the distance.

A sprinkling of music is woven in on one track initially from a Roland D50 synth piano part by Dan recorded in Brighton in 1998 before he moved to Mali (transported on minidisc); and a saxophone improvisation on another track recorded in Bamako, Mali in the NGO International Service’s bathroom on a laptop in 2000, by Mark from Senegal who Dan had met in the city.

Some tacks offer Malians playing traditional instrumentation in the villages. And Toureg women singing, clapping and playing the imzhad (traditional violin) during a camel trek over 2 days and 2 nights that Dan made from Timbuktu.

Also Dan’s Toureg friends singing in their mud house in a village close to the small town Dan lived in for 4 years Sévaré, close to Mopti on the route to Timbuktu.

A town that subsequently has become very dangerous due to the infiltration of ISIS to the point of the hotel/ restaurant where Dan socialised by night directly behind his home being on the BBC news after people were shot and killed there by Islamist militants in 2015. Far away from the peace and calm he knew living there from 1999-2003.

Close your eyes, space out or clean the house and travel.