Expanded edit of Annea Lockwood’s 1975 multi-channel field recording.

»World Rhythms« was among the first of its kind. The New Zealand-born American composer had been considering the environments that surrounded her since the ‘60s, but this particular recording was revolutionary: a multi-channel set of layered field recordings that zoomed in on natural rhythms, juxtaposing them with gong pieces (performed by Vanessa Tomlinson and Annea Lockwood), creating something almost entirely new in the process.

Of course, in 2026, the idea of a multichannel field recording work is nothing new, but when »World Rhythms« appeared, it was the domain of ethnomusicologists and high-minded musique concrète alchemists. Something this clear-headed and thism unadulterated simply hadn’t been experienced before.

Lawrence English first approached Lockwood with an idea to reissue the original work, but Lockwood had something else in mind. She wondered if English might ›revive‹ »World Rhythms«. So English began to pore through the master tapes that Lockwood used to construct the original piece and was taken aback by their sheer depth.

The original piece released on the »New Music for Electronic and Recorded Media« anthology in 1977, is just eight-and-a-half minutes long and, listening to it now, sounds like an excerpt. The new 37-minute edition extends each element without disrupting Lockwood’s core philosophy, spreading it into six long pieces that enhance and build out the original, its industrial-strength woodpecker knocks, lapping pools, croaking frogs and volcanic eruptions.