With the annual December Wonderfruit event as an ongoing site for trialling and presenting our explorations, the land itself has become a central character in this story. 

The Ancestral Forest, planted to restore the native ecology of the site–under the methods of Akira Miyawaki– provided a first major focus for Choomchon Sound. 

Here, the “community” is not only human: it is the entire ecosystem working as one - the trees, soil, insects, weather, and then the people who move among them, in particular during Wonderfruit.

Our intention in Choomchon Forest is to treat the forest as both subject and collaborator. 

Beginning with a 24 hour sound survey of the forest, we mapped out the sonic life of the forest and set recordings alongside the map. We then reduced the sounds to 7 layers that make up the forest: insects, birds, the earth, the sky, our inner sound, the leaves, the water that flows within it. 

During the inaugural Field Chapters event at Slow Wonder in the Wonderfruit Site [a kind of small-scale retreat based at the Slow Wonder area], working with Tarini [of Bex] we set representations of these 7 areas up mainly with materials from the forest [some exceptions for water] in a circle and invited attendees to gravitate to the objects that they felt called towards. 

We recorded the performances of these objects and set them up as the sonic elements for Choomchon Forest’s textural Layers. 

The final piece’s framework was built around these sounds, and the sonics of 24 hours in the forest. We completed the soundscape through creating a voice part performed by NOTEP as a representation of the Forest’s largest tree “mother tree”, and through that a continuous narrative thread bound together. 

The forest, like us, is a community bound together as one, under the same daily rhythms, risings and fallings, and through that shared experience, comes a powerful unity. The forest’s trajectory—disappeared, replanted, gradually re-establishing itself—mirrors that of many human communities reclaiming or reimagining their own place.

The Choomchon Forest final piece was presented as a sound installation played back through speakers across the canopy of the Ancestral Forest each night during Wonderfruit, and worked alongside lighting design from Jiro Endo to create an immersive experience. 

We were asked if we could provide a sound journey for listening to over wireless headphones while exploring the Ancestral Forest, in collaboration with the forest bar’s specially-created cocktail, and in association with Land Rover Defender, sponsors of the Ancestral Forest stage during Wonderfruit.

While Choomchon Forest is an abstract piece of music rooted in the forest, but which is designed to be dipped in and out of by the listener, for this we wanted to create something with a clear linear pathway running through the music, so we created a monologue performed by the mother tree [NOTEP] that walks the listener through the forest, and explains what they are seeing, the history of the forest, a little about the plants within it, and builds awareness of the forest community within.

NOTEP preparing for a work-in-progress performance of Choomchon Forest with James Greer at Field Chapters, August 2025.

The journey through the forest was well received, and we believe that there is a good potential for further such explorations where we can use a clear narrative thread to connect communities to the land through sound.