Nikki Sheth is an internationally recognised sound artist and composer. Her work aims to give voice to the environment and foster a deeper connection with the natural world through field recordings, soundscape composition, spatial audio practices, multimedia installations, and sound walking. Her interests in environmental sound include interspecies communication, nocturnal soundscapes and acoustic ecology - the relationship between sound and humans.
She holds a PhD in Musical Composition from The University of Birmingham, her thesis was titled ‘Blurring the Lines Between Field Recording, Soundscape Composition and Acousmatic Music’. The practice-led research project investigated the relationship between field recordings and the genres of pure field recording composition, soundscape composition and acousmatic composition in her own practice and reflected upon how this relates to practitioners in the field, acquired through a series of interviews.
She was awarded two Sound and Music awards (2020 & 2022), nominated for the Phonurgia Nova Awards (2020), received an Honourable Mention for the Sound of the Year Awards (2021), nominated for Ivor Novello Composer Award (2021) and winner of the Leah Reid Award from the International Alliance for Women in Music (2023). Her work has been played at Quench Gallery, Margate; Kings Place, London; and Ars Electronica, Linz, Austria; Sonic Territories, Germany; Pitea Performing Arts Biennial, Sweden; Spektra Festival, Columbia; Ecoacoustic Congress, Brisbane; as well as on BBC Radio 3 and Resonance FM. She has extensive field recording experience, using specialist equipment (including multichannel audio and ambisonics) having been on field recording residencies with Chris Watson, Jez riley French, Francisco Lopez, Eli Keszler, Leah Barclay and more.
She recently collaborated on the 'Harkening Critters' album released with Forms of Minutiae, the ‘Disruptive Frequencies’ album released with Nonclassical and her debut album, ‘Sounds of Mmabolela’ was released with Flaming Pines in 2021. Her work has been described by The Wire Magazine as ‘gorgeously trippy’, ‘enchanting’, ‘beautiful’, ‘dark, murky and mysterious, but also peaceful, serene and utterly alluring’.
In 2024 she was a Visiting Research Fellow at the University of the Sunshine Coast supported by the SCCA for the research project 'Visualising Nocturnal Soundscapes'. She is currently a Visiting Lecturer at Birmingham Conservatoire and a Short Course Tutor at UCL.
"The formal debut from this Birmingham, UK artist captures and cajoles aural corings from the South African wilderness — bugs, birds, larger mammals, nature’s sundry sighs. Superficial spins, blessedly, permit one to tour without a travel visa, a sun visor, or repellant-infused SPF-50, awash in weather patterns and ecosystem flirts. Yet Sounds Of Mmabolela truly comes to life when it artificially snaps into focus. The edges of animal sounds are ground together like flints in service of subtle sparks. This happens when you aren't quite listening closely enough. As “Paddabolela” concludes with chirps and cries massing in a waveform tempest, the outdoors ambience marvellously initiates a tangled staccato on “Limpopo”. - Review in The Wire Magazine, January 2021, Issue 443
When there is true calm, as on Nikki Sheth’s composition ‘Pemberton Gardens’, field recordings of bird calls are later punctuated by animalistic shrieks. That is indicative of its aim to conjure discordant tones to channel anger and express a desire to reshape power structures, railing against the violence of institutional whiteness. – Electronic Sound Magazine
Nikki Sheth’s gorgeously trippy manipulations of field recordings (the enchanting “Sandwell Valley” and “Pemberton Gardens”) bring an additional environmental perspective to that resistance that sits perfectly next to Dhangsha’s dirty and dubby exploration of both his own past and a lost lineage of Black techno and Black noise. – The Wire Magazine
In complete contract, the two pieces presented by Nikki Sheth, developed from field recordings, both conveyed a very real sense of place. The splashing water, manipulated honking geese and flapping wings of Sandwell Valley worked in harmony to effectively construct an impressionist landscape with sounds ... as did the often beautiful collage of subtly edited bird calls which comprised Pemberton Gardens. – Sound and Silence
