Music

Tracklist

Instrumental Sketches

Shades of Antarctica

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1. Reggae Party on Ice

The Thwaites Glacier, also called the Doomsday Glacier, is a very large Antarctic glacier flowing into the Amundsen Sea, off Antarctica’s west coast. It is now being monitored closely for its potential significant impact in raising sea levels. Parts of the adjacent ice shelf, retaining the glacier, are predicted to collapse within decades, which would lead to a sea level rise of two feet, if the entire glacier were to collapse.

Our track is a Caribbean party-time nod to those who fiddle while the earth heats up and burns. Humans and the earth are in a modern-day version of the Titanic, heading for a collision with an iceberg, albeit in a warming sea.

Reggae Party on Ice

2. Phases of Ice

Antarctica is about 98% covered in ice, the solid phase of water. By far, most of the world’s biosphere ice is everyday garden-variety ice, in a form of hexagonal crystal structure, known as Ice Ih. But who knew that ice is now believed to exist in twenty crystalline and three amorphous phases known as packing geometries, ranging from Ice I to Ice XIX? The other phases have generally been identified through high pressures and low temperatures, only under laboratory conditions.

With this track we explore the crackly, nebulous world of ice forms.

Phases of Ice

3. Blue Ice Blues

Blue ice is very compressed glacier snow in which air bubbles have been squeezed out, resulting in dense ice. It takes on a blue hue from the scattering of unabsorbed blue light waves. Blue ice areas in Antarctica are common in mountainous regions where the annual snow fall has been removed by wind and ablation. Large wheeled transport aircraft, using runways made on prepared hard blue ice surfaces, are one of the best ways to get supplies to the interior of the continent. These runways are often many miles long for the required stopping distance. Antarctic blue ice is also one of the best places on earth for locating meteorites, due to the good surface exposure.

Our music lands on and powers along a stretch of this hard, slippery ice surface.

Blue Ice Blues

4. Heroes of Antarctica

When film composer Miklós Rózsa was asked to compose the soundtrack for the 1968 film The Green Berets, starring John Wayne, he was reported to have replied, “I don’t do Westerns.” He was told, “It’s not a Western, it’s an Eastern.” We present this track, then, as our theme for an Antarctic “Southern.”

In this joyous piece, we tip our hats to all Antarctic heroes and venturers. First and foremost is the native wildlife, existing in some of the harshest weather on earth and now facing serious habitat change. The first polar explorers dodged fierce storms and icebergs in their wooden sailing ships, then fought cold and starvation, hauling sledges over mountains and dangerous crevasses. Later adventurers carved out endurance records through speed and better technology. Under-appreciated heroes are scientists and environmentalists working to understand and communicate the threats to the continent from climate change and destructive human activities. Our track is a salute to all brave guests of the Antarctic harshness.

Heroes of Antarctica

5. Snowdrifts

“Observations of snowdrift over Antarctic snow and blue ice” is the unassuming title of an article in the scientific journal, Annals of Glaciology, Volume 32, 2001. The study showed that snowdrift can occur over blue ice in very weak winds, whereas drift occurs only in much stronger winds over a snow base. Drift densities and gradients on blue ice are relatively small as a result of the limited amount of snow particles at the surface.

Here we present our own musical interpretation of a gentle world of snowdrifts.

Snowdrifts

6. Jazz Is Antarctica

Antarctica has not been commonly portrayed through jazz, which today has become a mixed bag of styles and origins. Very few mainstream artists have taken on the subject through large suites or full albums. Although we do not know what Antarctic jazz is supposed to sound like, many definitions of jazz include terms such as complexity, improvisation, call and response patterns of communication, irregular rhythms, off-standard blue notes and swinging. Many of these words could also be used to describe the constantly evolving and changing world of Antarctica and the people venturing there. While thorough planning, not improvisation, may be the best way of dealing with the real Antarctic world, clever improvisation has provided success and survival in many Antarctic situations over the years.

We present some brassy horn-driven music to paint Antarctica as a perpetual engine that influences much of the world’s climate through its ice, ocean and wind currents.

Jazz Is Antarctica

7. Mystic Midnight

In Antarctica, over a region slightly north of the Antarctic Circle to the South Pole, the Sun does not set during the six-month summer (polar day or Midnight Sun). During the six-month winter (polar night), the Sun will not be visible. The number of days the Sun is visible increases as you get closer to Pole, where the Sun rises and sets only once each year. The very real downside for people working at research bases over long periods of polar day or night may be sleep disturbances, hyperactivity, lack of energy and depression.

This is our portrayal of long and relentlessly dynamic Antarctic summer days and winter nights.

Mystic Midnight

8. World of Whales

In 2022 scientists in the Southern Ocean, near the South Orkney Islands, observed a supergroup of about 1000 fin whales, fur seals and birds, foraging for krill, in an area known as one of the largest krill harvesting grounds. This was good news for whale observers, since whales became nearly extinct after massive kills by factory ships in the first half of the 20th century. What was not so good was that the whales were competing with four commercial trawlers for the same krill. At present, there are no rules in place regulating physical and environmental interactions between the commercial trawlers and whales. Some scientists believe there is not enough krill, an important part of the carbon and food chain, to support pre-whaling whale levels. There are now serious concerns about the negative ecological effects resulting from this industrial-scale krill fishery in Southern Ocean waters.

In our track we’re in the water, observing whales as they swim, breach and sing.

World of Whales

9. Swinging Antarctica

South Pole temperatures over March to June 2023 had some huge swings of 72º F (40º C), which were records for both highest and lowest temperatures ever recorded on those particular days. Wind speed records were also set.

This track continues with more jazz-flavoured music for such a swinging continent.

Swinging Antarctica

10. Holiday in Antarctica

The modern era of Antarctic tourism began in 1969 with a single ship-based cruise from Ushuaia, Argentina to the Antarctic Peninsula. Recent decades have seen continued tourist growth and more locations visited. Pre-COVID visitors totalled a seasonal high of 74,000 in 2019-20. Following a pandemic pause, estimates for current visitors exceed 100,000. Worries about environmental effects from ships and people continue to mount. Although human activity in Antarctica falls under the Antarctic Treaty, the operational activities of tourism are self-regulated by the tourist operators.

Our track takes a tropical view of Antarctic travel, coloured by a warming global climate, which is of great concern for Antarctica.

Holiday in Antarctica

11. Metronome

In 2023 Antarctic sea ice reached the lowest level ever recorded, although it is the decline of Arctic ice that is currently far more dramatic. With the 2015 Paris Agreement there was international consensus to keep the global warming increase in the lower 1.5º C to 2º C range over the pre-industrial era level. Since then, scientists now believe that even at the 1.5º C level the earth’s temperature would become disastrous and that fires, droughts and heat waves would be the result. The 2023 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded that we are nowhere near to remaining below the target level. Current climate promises amounted to an excessive 2.5º C increase by the end of the century. How long does the earth have before irreversible climate change occurs, sending it to another extinction era?

Our track is a commentary that time is clicking relentlessly on global warming. It’s melodically based on one of the most commonly used pop music styles, the doo-wop progression, especially popular in the 1950s.

Metronome

Credits

Synthesizer & programming, guitars, arrangements and mixing by Michael Stibor

Additional arrangements by Carole Desmarteau and Valmar Kurol

Mastered by Richard Addison, Trillium Mastering (Montreal, Canada) www.trilliumsound.com

Photographs and track notes by Valmar Kurol

Album graphics by Michael Valcenat

Produced by Valmar Kurol