Wilderness Withdrawal EP

Ben Babbitt

↳ In September of 2017, The Whistler collaborated with the Field Museum to transform one of their rooms into a cave. Anthropologist Bill Parkinson was there to talk about early human life in caves, geologist Jim Holstein showed us how stalactites and stalagmites are formed, paleontologist Bill Simpson went digging for mastodons, and mammalogist Tyrone Lavery showed everyone bat specimens.

For our part, Whistler bar manager Julieta Campos provided cave-inspired cocktails — poured through  “caves” carved into an enormous ice luge — and we brought in our friend Ben Babbitt, the composer behind the cave-themed video game Kentucky Route Zero, to perform a live soundtrack for the event.

Presented here are stereo mixes of Ben’s quadraphonic performance at the Field Museum. Originally performed using a four-channel surround system, the audio was captured live from the mixing board and then folded into these stereo excerpts.

Live recording by Mike Usrey
Mixed and mastered by Ben Babbitt
Image courtesy of Tamas Kemenczy