Stephen Jay's treasured Lagerstätte

by Elaltitan

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1.	Opabinia 07:15	buy track
2.	Anomalocaris 04:44	buy track
3.	Hallucigenia 05:14	buy track
4.	Wiwaxia 07:55	buy track
5.	Nectocaris 08:04	buy track
6.	Punctuated equilibrium 06:21	buy track
7.	Dinomischus 07:03	buy track

about

Inspired by Stephen Jay Gould's 'Wonderful life' in which he claims that contingency plays a major role in the evolutionary history of life. He based his argument on the extraordinarily well preserved fossils of the Burgess Shale, a rich fossil-bearing deposit in Canada's Rocky Mountains, dating 505 million years ago. Gould argues that during this period just after the Cambrian explosion there was a greater disparity of anatomical body plans (phyla) than exist today. However most of these phyla left no modern descendants. All of the Burgess animals were exquisitely adapted to their environment, and there exists little evidence that the survivors were any better adapted than their extinct contemporaries.
Gould proposed that given a chance to "rewind the tape of life" and let it play again, we might find ourselves living in a world populated by descendants of Hallucigenia rather than Pikaia (the ancestor of all vertebrates). Gould stressed that his argument was not based on randomness but rather contingency; a process by which historical outcomes arise from an unpredictable sequence of antecedent states, where any change in the sequence alters the final result.

Recorded, edited and mixed December 2020 - January 2021.

Instruments used: keyboard, piano, guitar, bassguitar, Neutron, Microbrute.
Kalimba on 'Punctuated equilibrium' by Bart van den Brink.
Field recordings made in my hometown Onderdendam, at work in Groningen and along the shores of southern Brittany (where also the coverpicture was taken).
Audioparts of interview on 'Punctuated equilibrium' taken from TVO.

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released February 7, 2021

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Elaltitan Asnières Sur Blour, France

Elaltitan is an extinct genus of large lithostrotian titanosaur sauropod dinosaur, known from the southern Argentina.
Elaltitan is also nom de plume of Wim Joosten, using field recordings and electronic devices to create dark ambient soundscapes.
"Low frequencies keep me alive." ... more

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