While lacking a childhood nostalgia for the various incarnations of Sir David Attenborough’s long-running nature series – a nostalgia expressed often by many British friends and colleagues – I have in recent years developed a profound respect for what is, by North American standards, very exotic television programming. What would be relegated to the public access sector in North America is mainstream, primetime viewing in the UK, part of a connection to naturalism descended, maybe, from a sort of Darwinian fascination with nature and the exotic (which may or may not in itself have much to do with national identity – but let’s steer clear of that). However, the series doesn’t differ so much from the spectacle of North American television: its great strength will always be its aversion to didacticism and centring of the visually stimulating and entertaining within the exotic sphere of the natural world of our planet.
A cd or lp of music from such a series is another matter. Removed from the visual context, away from the spectacle of the natural world and Attenborough’s soothing narration, the soundtrack to 1979’s Life on Earth series, composed by Edward Williams, is an uncomfortable listen. Sudden jumps queued to the visual movement of the original documentary turn otherwise pastoral pieces into jarring experiences – as one would expect from a nature documentary. This means the music is neither a Friday-night jumpstart nor a Sunday afternoon chill-out – the two widest variances, I sometimes think, for popular music in our era. But music doesn’t have to fit anywhere to be enjoyable, and as Life on Earth is popular culture, for many – as for me – this remarkable collection of musical moments is worth investigation beyond the television series.
For those so inclined, joy is found first in the titles of the pieces: ‘Comb Jellies – Hydromedusae – “Birth” of a Medusa – Gymnopedie for Jellyfish’ (the influence of Erik Satie apparent not only in titles), or ‘A Gallimaufry Of Small Mammals – Buckbilled Platypus Swimming – Desman Underwater – Pygmy Or (Silky Furred) Anteater And Baby – Flying Foxes – The Several Punces’ – the most playful and recognisable of melodies from the series. Within those wide titular frameworks, a world of variances expresses itself, moving from the whimsical to the frightening and back, expressing not only a landscape but an era of television making: ‘the magical, ambient sounds of science, nature and music for jellyfish’, as the liner notes by Trunk Records master of ceremonies Jonny Trunk suggest.
The release itself is another labour of love from Trunk, and it’s worth owning for the cover art alone: a reproduction of Attenborough’s own frog photo from the original Life on Earth book. Trunk’s three-word manifesto, ‘Music, Nostalgia, Sex’, says just enough about both the label’s interests and the odd, overwhelming way in which people form a connection to popular culture, from childhood and beyond. As time passes, these connections break down, mean less – not to those who experienced them, perhaps, but the generation after, those with no nostalgic connection (or those not connected at all to the culture as a child, like me). But Trunk is the kind of label that is interested in re-earthing rather than unearthing the historical artifact: returning – or in this case actually introducing – music to our plane of existence in a manner that reaches towards an audience through a contemporary medium. What more can we ask of purveyors of popular culture? Not nearly so much, I suspect.