Gruenrekorder featured on Bandcamp Daily
The Best Field Recordings on Bandcamp | By Matthew Blackwell / April 2025
Helgoland | Lasse-Marc Riek
The history of Helgoland, or Heligoland in English, is long and turbulent: the North Sea island was taken by the British during the Napoleonic wars, converted into a resort for upper-class Europeans in the 1820s, ceded to Germany in 1890, used as a military base during World War I, and occupied again by England after World War II. Finally, it was returned to Germany in 1952, after being used as a bombing range by the English. Through all of this, the island has been an especially important site for ornithology: Heinrich Gätke’s book Heligoland, an Ornithological Observatory, was crucial to the study of migration, and the Heligoland Bird Observatory was one of the world’s first. Helgoland, by Gruenrekorder founder Lasse-Mark Riek, is itself a classic work of ornithology. Originally released in a limited edition in 2013, it forms part of a set of great Gruenrekorder albums newly available on Bandcamp. Riek’s strenuous effort at recording the unique mix of avian life on the island was certainly worth it: murres, Northern gannets, black-legged kittiwakes, and Arctic terns make up a cacophony of sound not likely to be heard outside of this isolated habitat.