Industry Standard. Sound as Witness. Music as Resistance.

Industry Standard is a vinyl album built from undercover field recordings gathered during investigations into animal industries.

Some stories are only revealed through sound.

For more than three decades, my work has centred on undercover investigations into animal industries. Most people know that work through images and video. Footage from inside slaughterhouses, farms, laboratories and live export operations. But alongside every image I have ever captured, there has always been something else. The sound.

The bleating of sheep in holding pens. The dull thud of bodies against metal. Ventilation systems, machinery, radios playing in the background. These sounds do not go viral, but they stay with you. They linger in a way images sometimes do not.

Industry Standard grew out of a desire to do something with those sounds. To give them space. To allow people to listen rather than look. To experience a form of witness that does not rely on shock, but on attention.

The album is built entirely from undercover field recordings gathered during investigations into animal industries around the world. The sounds are shaped into an immersive listening experience that sits at the intersection of sonic art, activism and experimental music.

Where it began

My journey into animal rights did not begin with investigations. It began with culture.

In the early 1980s, punk and anarcho-punk bands like Conflict, Crass and Subhumans brought animal rights into music, lyrics and artwork. Listening to Conflict’s Meat Means Murder was a turning point for me. I went vegetarian soon after. Those records were not just music. They were education, politics and ethics wrapped into sound.

Before the internet, ideas travelled through records, sleeves, fanzines and gigs. Culture carried compassion. Caring about animals felt urgent, rebellious and collective.

That connection between culture and activism has never left me. My first film, Meathead, was a drama-documentary featuring Captain Sensible and Lene Lovich, using music and narrative to talk about animal farming. Years later, I created a video installation titled Industry Standard at London’s ICA. The idea of bearing witness through art has always been there, even as investigations became my primary focus.

From evidence to listening

Over the years, I accumulated hundreds of hours of field recordings without quite knowing what to do with them. Everything changed when I met Karol Orzechowski, also known as Gnostic Front, at an animal rights conference in the United States. Karol is a musician, filmmaker and former investigator, now working at Faunalytics.

We began a slow collaboration, sharing sounds, ideas and experiments over many months. Karol brought a musical sensitivity and restraint that transformed the material.

A different kind of advocacy

Industry Standard is not a campaign tool in the traditional sense. It is not designed to persuade through facts or visuals. It is a listening project. A way of allowing people to sit with the realities of animal industries without being shown them.

Sound bypasses defences. It invites reflection rather than reaction. In that sense, this album is an experiment in a different kind of advocacy. One rooted in attention, feeling and cultural engagement.

The decision to release the album on vinyl is deliberate. Those early punk records shaped how I understood the world. Vinyl was where ideas lived. Industry Standard is released as a limited edition 12-inch record, with an eight-page booklet of images and reflections. It is intended as an artefact, not just a file.

Release details

Industry Standard is now available for pre-order in UK & pre order Internationally & digitally.

The vinyl release will take place on 18 January, the new moon, in January.

This project sits alongside my investigative work, not instead of it. It is another way of bearing witness.

I hope you will listen.