Baboon versus Earth (Typhoeus) - work in progress

for double bass, electronics, and field recordings
Mark Cauvin (2025)

Version one 5’32”

Baboon versus Earth (Typhoeus) explores the collision between instinct and elemental force — the animal and the geologic, the living and the mythic. Drawing from the myth of Typhoeus, the monstrous being buried beneath Mount Etna, the work imagines his restless energy manifesting through the cries, calls, and convulsions of the natural world.

The piece integrates recorded baboon vocalisations, processed and reconfigured through layers of electronic texture and amplified double bass. These sounds merge into a dense acoustic terrain that alternates between eruption and stillness, tension and dissolution. At times the baboon voice appears as a solitary figure confronting an unyielding Earth; at others, it becomes indistinguishable from the subterranean resonance that engulfs it.

The composition sits between soundscape and mythscape — a sonic embodiment of suppressed chaos, of forces that lie beneath the surface of both nature and the human psyche. In this work, Typhoeus is not merely a figure of myth but a metaphor for instinctive vitality, resistance, and the recurring struggle between chaos and containment.

INSTRUMENTATION

CLICKER - Ciat Lonbarde

Double Bass 1890 with wooden mute

Skeleton Bass 2000

Arcus Machinatus (motor bow)

Reel to reel

Samples

Effects: Glou Glou Avantgarde, Tonebender Fuzz IV, Geiger Counter, Flanger, Tensor, Particles 2 L&R, Vermona VSR 3.2 L&R

Recorded with Stellavox AMI48 mixer, Nagra 4.2, Nagra IVS