Dr. Sounds

Lidköping, Sweden

Shoreline

ElectronicInstrumental

Behind the Music

Participating in this project showed me that producing music to illustrate a story helps me, as an artist, to reach out in a new, innovative way. I hope to raise awareness of the problems in the ocean while expanding my audience and my professional horizons. 

Music is a mechanism for storytelling because it enriches the context of the story, in contrast to the typical "disaster story" that we see in the news every day. I was inspired to use a combination of electronic sound and environmental and ocean sounds to tell the story. Overall, I enjoyed working with an established and reputable brand in an utterly important news project.

Dr. Sounds
About Dr. Sounds

The Romanian born, 30-year-old Alexander Forselius (Dr. Sounds) started playing around with open source music softsynth ZynAddSubFX in the linux-based environment during the mid '00s. He started posting ambient inspired, electronic soundscapes, composed using keystrokes on the computer keyboard, with a sound inspired by the Finnish DJ and artist, Darude. Alexander was an early player in the streaming music revolution that emerged in the early 2010's. He soon found his way onto large yoga and meditation playlists and was placed on Indian and American mindfulness apps that emerged in the late part of that decade.

Winner of the 2021 Scripps Howard Award for Excellence in Innovation in Journalism

The Journalism behind the Music

All music in this project is based on The Outlaw Ocean, a New York Times Best-Selling book by Ian Urbina that chronicles lawlessness at sea around the world. This reporting touches on a diversity of abuses ranging from illegal and overfishing, arms trafficking at sea, human slavery, gun running, intentional dumping, murder of stowaways, thievery of ships and other topics.

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