It was the first time when I took out my new mics – hydrophones and contact mics made by Jez Riley French.
I have Aquarian H2a hydrophone which I liked. It’s a heavy duty mic, so I have tried it in rough conditions – recording in boiling water or freezing it. It always worked great. What is nice is that it’s quite heavy so it’s easy to dip it in rapid current streams.

But I was shocked by the quality of sound of JrF hydrophones – they have wide frequency range and much less internal noise than H2a.
I was amazed with the sound of tadpoles – they sound like they would like to devour my mics. It could work nice for sound of piranhas.
Here are tadpoles in pond, recorded with both hydrophones:

And another take with a pair of JrF hydrophones, much more intense:

And some samples of recordings in a mountain stream – I’m always fascinated with variety of sounds which I can get in one location with hydrophones, changing its position slightly:

There is never enough birds in the library. Listening to the birds singing is totally relaxing experience for me. Plus I love recording sounds with natural reverb of places.

I left my Neumann MS rig on balcony, recording dawn chorus from 4am. It’s stunning to listen how forest wakes up. And always something unexpected happens:

Later I found this beautifully singing cuckoo in the forest:

And Tawny Owl at night (it was very distant, so I had to use RX on it):

During the day I did comparison test between my trusty Sony PCM D50 (mics in wide position) and Zoom H6 (with MS capsule) recording thunders and rain. They sound quite similar, yet Sony sounds brighter.

During the windy day I attached DPA 4060s to the tree branches to record super close perspective of leaves rustle. Being omni mics they record less wind rumble than cardioids making them good choice for this kind of recording.

As a bonus I recorded heating radiator hiss in a house we stayed with DPAs and a pair of JrF contact mics. Below are different takes of DPAs, JrFs and a mix of them.

I was invited to took part in documenting art performance in public space by Mateusz Choróbski, during which planes passed 200 meters above the main street in city Łodź in central Poland.
I got permission to get to the top of the highest building on the street to record it.

As I was afraid, of course HVAC units were a problem, but I managed to find one spot where it was relatively quiet.

Before the pass, I recorded 21 storey top atmosphere.

And here is the pass: first Zlin Z-526AFS propeller sports plane, which was often used in aerobatics:
Neumann KMR 81 / KM 120 MS kit:

DPA 4060 stereo pair (different take):

And once again the same plane followed by PZL TS-11 Iskra jet trainer aircraft:

Later in the evening, I recorded some atmospheres of the city:

Leaving hotel before the dawn, I found this great sounding vending machine. Taking advantage of the opportunity that there was no one in the hallway, I recorded it:

And later when I went out to hotel backyard parking I grabbed this beautiful night city atmosphere:

There is something in night city atmospheres what I love. Tonality, diffuse distant sounds and specific reverberation. For sure I need to do more recording session at late night around my city.

As always when traveling I took my recording rig with me to do some field recordings in the meantime. I love exploring and finding sonic differences between cities. After contacting my sound friends from Warsaw I chose some spots which seemed to be interesting.

The first (and obvious) sound spot was a hotel I stayed in. As always, I did full sound coverage of a hotel room: doors, bathroom, light switches, room tones and so on.
It was located in the very center and had a very busy, constant traffic wash by the window. I left the recorder running at different times of a day, grabbing hours of different intensities and tonalities. Here is a friday night atmosphere, recorded from the 6th floor window:

In the hotel I found interesting elevator sound:

The theme photo was taken from the 30th floor terrace of an old skyscraper in the very center, which was rather disappointing sonically – lots of people (even it was 11 pm) and heavy HVAC noise.

One of my friends pointed me good sound spot – two-tier bridge with one of them for trams and pedestrians. I managed to record nice trams passes there:

But the best destination was the underground. I love the sound of underground approaching and pulling out. High speed of cars, acceleration and braking, tunnels resonating the sound and air moved by the cars creates fascinating sounds. That amount of metal moving fast in such reverbant environment can’t sound boring. Some of the passes sound as someone would heavily play with pitchbender on it.

And general platform atmosphere:

Every escalator sounds different, but some of them have its own character: