Leviathan: Soundscape commission

In October 2025, I had the pleasure of providing a soundscape to Mark Pozlep’s ‘Leviathan’. Mark was the international artist for the SPILL 2025 festival, and Leviathan was the culmination of Mark’s research into the changing face of the Suffolk coast.

As part of his extensive research for Leviathan, Mark had walked the East coast from Lowestoft to Harwich in the summer of 2025. Along the way he spoke to local people, interviewed ex-fishermen and extensively shot videos, images and made sound recordings. I had sent him scans of books and articles on Suffolk myths and folklore, along with some field recordings and links to other books and movies set along the coast.

It was an honour when Mark asked if I would be interested in supplying the soundscape for his piece. He then sent me a collection of recordings made on his walking journey, along with some amazing images he had taken of the landscape. I raided my own bank of field recordings, walked around my garden bashing and flapping various items (thankfully, I have a very creaky shed door), and visited Felixstowe to capture the sounds of the port, beach and amusement arcades. I used various microphones to record sounds that are usually hidden such as the crackle of electromagnetic energy and bubbles popping beneath the surface of the sea.

The Beach at Sizewell [image by Matt Shenton]

I wanted to include a link to the once prosperous East coast herring fishing industry, so designed a Max patch to create a synth pulse which is a ‘data sonification’ of the amount of herring caught at Lowestoft and Great Yarmouth between 1896 and 1976. The yearly catch of fish in tonnes is scaled and converted by Max into a midi signal. This signal triggers an external synth to play a note that rises and falls depending on how much herring was caught in any given year; the greater the amount of herring, the higher the note. Notes then get lower as fewer fish are caught as the industry declines.

The final soundscape was nearly forty minutes long, and contained almost one hundred individual sounds that float in and around both Mark’s vivid narration and the touching interviews of two fishermen reflecting on their lives at sea.

For me, the standout element of the soundscape is a recording that Mark sent to me of a choir singing at the ‘Lowestoft Memorial Service for ships lost at Sea’. This blew me away; the fragility and slightly wavering flutter of the solo vocalist and the glorious beauty of the choir in full voice bookends the piece, and glues everything together emotionally.

Leviathan was presented as a conversation with a sea-monster as a dual screen video and sound installation at St Mary’s Church in Ipswich for the duration of the SPILL festival. The work was also presented as a guided soundwalk along the bank of the river Stour on the Shotley Peninsula. The extremely high tide flooding the coastal path along with a blustery wind whipping salty water into participant's faces certainly added to the experience.

Mark Pozlep and Matt Shenton about to begin their soundwalk in Shotley. [Image by Robin Deacon]

Mark has kindly allowed me to embed the instrumental audio of Leviathan below, and under this is a detailed explanation of the composition.

Behind the arrangement

The arrangement and sounds you hear mimic the walk made by Mark down the coast from Lowestoft to Felixstowe (and then on to Harwich). I selected sounds that for me reflect the changing use of the coastline, the impact of technological change on the landscape, and of memory and history slipping in and out of present time.

Roughly speaking, the piece flows as follows:

• Lowestoft from 1896 to 1940s - fishing boat sounds, along with the sea and Africa Alive

• Sizewell in the 1960s - the nuclear power plant hums and sizzles the atmosphere

• Orford Ness in the 1940s - radar and unknown experiments

• Felixstowe in modern times with container shipping and tourism

Sounds heard throughout the piece:

• Creaking wood and boat ropes.

• Creaking floorboards and the sound of the engine recorded onboard the Lydia Eva stream drifter in Great Yarmouth.

• Sails and halyards created by flapping canvas.

• Footsteps on various shingle and sand beaches.

• A recreation of the RDF beacon that once broadcast morse code and a high pitched frequency as an aid for navigating ships. The morse code was the letters ‘B’ and ‘V’ which looped every 15 seconds.

• The sea made from blending various field recordings made along the coast.

• Bird recordings of native songbirds, gulls, owls and rooks chattering at night.

• Crackles and buzzes captured by EMF microphones.

• Bells - reminiscent of the church at Dunwich which fell into the sea.


• Swallows at Bawdsey that have colonised the old WW2 gun battery.


• Pebbles being moved around on the concrete at Bawdsey.


• Felixstowe port with beeping vehicles, droning equipment and shipping containers clanging.


• Crackles and tape hiss.


• Shortwave radio recorded at Landguard Fort.


• VHF radio of boats contacting a harbourmaster. 


• Voices playing and swimming in the sea.


• Mannings Arcade slot machines and money clanging.


• Reel to reel music from a programme about seals
.

• Sounds made by me manipulating found objects on beaches (rocks, stones, shells, driftwood, etc).


• Contact mics on fences and barbed wire to reflect the sectioning off of the land, preventing access to walkers.


• Hydrophone recordings of underwater sounds at Felixstowe port.

• Wind turbine blades slicing through the air recorded by Mark.

Data sonification and synth drone

• The background synth pulses are the sonified data of the volume of herring caught at Lowestoft and Great Yarmouth from 1896 to 1976.


• I created a patch in Max to sonify the data. For each calendar year, MAX scales the data, converts it to a midi note and sends it to the synth to play.

• The more fish caught during a particular year, the higher the note. Notes then get lower as fewer fish are caught and the industry declines.


• During each world war fishing was suspended, and after 1976 no herring were caught as the fishing industry was over. The synth shouldn’t really produce a sound at these points as the midi note would be a zero, but a glitch in the patch caused it to make a low pulse that I liked, so the mournful pulse continues throughout.