Ambient Vibrations

Thunderstorm and Ambient Vibrations

Some music asks to be followed closely. Thunderstorm asks for a little space around it.

Created for Ambient Vibrations, this experimental listening work begins with a storm recorded by James Dawson in Cambridge in 2020. Anna Starushkevych improvised her voice over the weather recordings; James Dawson shaped those elements into the finished track. What emerges is neither song nor soundscape alone, but a meeting of weather, voice and imagination.

The work was made in a time when many people were listening differently: more privately, more slowly, and often with uncertainty close at hand. Thunderstorm leaves room for that. It does not tell the listener what to feel. It offers sound, atmosphere and time in which their own images and associations can surface.

The Thunderstorm Study

We invited people to experience Thunderstorm with their eyes closed and notice whatever emerged — images, memories, emotions or physical sensations. The responses revealed remarkably different inner worlds, from landscapes and memories to feelings of warning, grief, release and calm.

There is no right or wrong response. We invite you to add yours.

Take part

Find a quiet space and, if possible, use good-quality headphones.
Close your eyes and listen to Thunderstorm without interruption.
Notice any images, memories, emotions or physical sensations that arise.
Afterwards, take a moment to write down what you experienced.
Share your response through our feedback form.

Listen to Thunderstorm

We recommend listening with high-quality headphones in a quiet space.

Listener responses

Ultimately, these listener responses show the personal nature of deep audition—music is experienced as differently as the people listening to it.

"...mountains in Galizien, hilly landscape, which are amplified by the echo. At sea, a sailor’s song came to my mind and I thought I heard the wind. Inhaling and exhaling with the waves I could taste the salinity of the air...

I was bedded in ochre light and the thoughts were to break out of the cycle of making money or

trading. Fo me, the thunderstorm had something like this constant rumbling of the world around me.

The thunderstorm gave me among other things the association of ‘money makes the world go round’ and how I am trapped in this hustle and bustle...the soothing rain and the singing reminiscent of flute tones, cello, with short excursion into the opera aria. Please excuse me for writing so much now, but I am deeply aware of my being a trader and I wonder about the interrelation of conscious and unconscious."

W.P. (Bookstore Owner)

"I was immediately transported to an ancient huge cathedral, where spirits were flying up near the roof. I saw curving beams, dark wood and stone, and it felt cold. The soaring voice cut through the vision with great power, lamenting about the lives lost, lives lived, and lives yet to be lived. Then I had a vision of a big open field, in the rain, with a solitary woman figure standing there. Nearby was the cathedral with a cemetery next to it.

The tones were dark and grey, but everything had a sense of peace, despite the lament being so dramatic."

A.B. (Director and Artist Manager)

"The opening projected me to my childhood at school in Ely, and into the cathedrale. The echo of the voice and its passage through and down that huge stone building is haunting. The feeling is euphoric and spells safeness, safeness from the outside where the rain is pouring and dripping. The thunder was always frightening in those days, it was associated with God in a bizarre and contradictory way. The wrath of God. Strange that his wrath was outside and the comfort and calmness inside, yet they told us that this was the house of God.

As the voice and the thunderstorm continue and progress, one feels a certain agitation and warning coming from the voice, alarmed as the thunder becomes louder in its bursts.

Then it ends and one feels released. "Oh good, the storm is over and the rain has stopped. We can go outside now where everything will sparkle and smell so fresh again. The sun might burst through the clouds and we can wake up from that dream."

S. V. (Artist)

...vocals are great: first I felt like I was on the top of a mountain inside a small church, a dark church. It was raining outside, and it feels like the singing is coming out of the altar and is bringing positive energy. But then it becomes darker and darker and it feels like it is a prophecy of some grief or a tragedy. At the end you realise that it is grief, indeed, which is a constant companion of humanity.

H.K. (Lawyer)

"Firstly it sent me to sleep twice, it’s very beautiful and feels timeless. I could envision the storm and felt I was in a sacred place"

G.B. (Designer)

"When I initially listened to this piece, I saw bleak, expansive landscapes. Wild, lonely and haunting. Swirling, smoke-like billows surrounded me in the dark night. The colours were black, grey, and dark blue. I then saw myself in an old castle on the moors, again all grey-coloured, deserted and haunting. As the music progressed, I found myself in a small cave, still alone, but with a fire in front of me giving me hope and warmth against the storm raging outside."

L.B. (PR Manager)

"The power of God: hope and despair, giving and taking, all is temporary and ever changing. The feeling of "I am saved, but I have to continue fighting to keep surviving. It was like I am listening to a siren singing". There was so much more than a thunderstorm and vocals, it felt full of energy and life."

Y.N. (Student of Philosophy)

“An Experiment”

He turned up the fire and started to make tea. There is a special guest coming today. He brought out the biscuit, lay the table and the tea sets. It was pouring outside and he was waiting. Then boy entered the house, his collar was damp, but rest of his clothes were well protected from the rain. He carefully pulled out something underneath his jacket. “Did you have it?” The man asked.

“Yes, I re-analyzed the data”.

“I did spectrum analysis and nothing special in the Fourier space. Except, at one point, if you do a Laplacian transform, there is a small peak you can funnel out”.

“That’s it?” The man asked.

“Yes, it was quite randomly distributed, no solution to the enchantment.”

“Have a cup of tea then.”

The boy took a sip and took a bite of the biscuit. The sharp taste of the ginger made him frown, while the man was carefully examining the data.

“Also I talked to her”.

“You did what?”

“It’s more of a singing rather than a talk. As you said, always use original and creative approach to science.”

The men shivered a bit but made no comments.

“What did you learn?”

“She told me she was sitting near the shore, singing to the sailors about the Ancient Greece. The vicissitude of Athens and the prophecy of the gold Apple. The heartbroken arrows of Artemis.” “Basically the Odyssey”

“Nothing else?”

“And one thing, don’t fall for the enchanted voice, it is what’s underneath matters.”

“You shouldn’t have done that. That was a huge mistake”.

“The heart wants what a heart wants”.

The man turned around, put the data analysis with on top of a file with a Red stamp on it “Rejected Thesis”. Titled “The genuine approach to a siren’s singing: the non-existence of enchantment”. 1952.

“Rejection reason: The student should focus fully on the scientific merit rather than non-supportive personal bias and by listening to her is a clear sign of enchantment, which makes any of the following statements invalid and unreliable”. XXX University.

Y. G. (Scientist)

I was in a huge cave carved into a rock overlooking a vast plain, there were dozens, maybe hundreds of people there. We were waiting for something, I am not sure what. Maybe for the weather to change. Maybe for an invading army. It was awful quiet. All the animals had stopped singing. It was like ten thousand years ago.

M. S. (Journalist)

"I felt it was music that reached into one's very soul. Very powerful and evocative. Music that spans time and in itself is timeless. Strips away all pretensions and reaches into the core of life and living.
Many, many flashbacks - the rain taking me to windswept moors in Derbyshire, mountain tops in Galicia, pilgrims in long dark waterproof capes with flashlights on their heads, wandering around in the dark of the early morning, whilst trying to navigate through a herd of cows on the Camino de Santiago de Compostela!
The music then taking me to deeper spiritual places where I had felt the presence of a mystical being. Centuries old , tiny churches in Spain with an agelessness about them and a mysterious, magical presence enhanced by the atmosphere, the sense of age and agelessness."

Suzie (Fundraising Specialist)

"It is an exquisite and disturbing piece of work.

It felt close to a religious experience.

Just as being close to the power of nature is.

And as with a thunderstorm, it was a relief to sense it’s passing."

H. A-W. (Actress)