by Sean Cooper

Chris Watson was a founding member of late-'70s/early-'80s techno and synth-pop innovators Cabaret Voltaire and, later, ambient-industrial fusioners the Hafler Trio. In something of an odd switch, Watson left the music industry behind in the early '90s to work as a sound recordist for the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. Watson quickly branched out into production for film and television, and has since handled field recording for a number of nature programs, documentaries, and feature films. In 1996, after collecting hundreds of hours of location recordings from less accessible regions of the world, Watson returned, after a fashion, to music production, releasing his first-ever "solo album," Stepping into the Dark, on Jon Wozencroft's Touch label. Actually a compilation of recordings of natural settings spanning from Inverness to Kenya to Venezuela to Cumbria, the release was lauded by sources as varied as American indie rock magazine CMJ New Music Monthly and German experimental post-techno artist Uwe "Atom Heart" Schmidt, who went so far as to urge fans to seek out Stepping into the Dark via the insert of his 1996 CD, Built. Watson's second album for Touch, Inside the Circle of Fire, was released in 1998.