Making music with wildlife.
Field recordings from birds, mammals, and remote landscapes, sampled, looped, and turned into house, funk, and bass for the club floor.
How do we make music with bird sounds?
Sounds Like Home: Wherever Birds Fly
Axel sets out on a years-long expedition across West Africa to record the calls of migratory birds, some rare, some on the edge of disappearing. What begins with the memory of a single bird call becomes a personal mission through forests, wetlands, and remote villages.
Wildifyed
Wildifyed (stylised from Wildified) is built from loops composed during dawn car rides through remote deserts, uninhabited islands, and tropical rainforests, where Axel recorded wildlife sounds on the road with his brother Ario. He sampled the recordings and transformed them into beats (lo-fi, house, funk, dubstep, jungle) and shaped the strongest into four tracks, each carrying its own story: Axel Munthe's legacy, the source of his name; the challenges of brotherhood; dancing through melancholy; and the drummer Gregory Coleman, creator of the Amen break, who died homeless and penniless.
"Years of seeking creative triggers culminated in overlanding through two continents. Wildifyed is just the beginning."
Singing With Nightingales
With Sam Lee.
The Global Birdsong
Composed with Tim Arinaitwe for BirdLife International: one piece of music woven from bird sounds contributed by nearly all of BirdLife's 125 Partners, across 100+ countries. Premiered at the Global Flyways Summit & Partnership Meeting, 2026.
AOS Bird-Ringing & Sound Residency
Divjakë-Karavasta National Park, with the Albanian Ornithological Society: mist-netting and ringing mornings, field recording and sound afternoons. Produced "Dancing with Vjosë-Nartë."
The Forest · Forest Creative Loft
A live nature music set from the "Music Across Continents" series, Birds and Beats, recorded at the Forest Creative Loft.
On stage
About
Axel Wild (Axel Drioli) is a UK-based, Italian-born musician, producer, and wildlife sound recordist who builds electronic music around the raw rhythms of the natural world. As the founder of the field-led creative studio Sounding Wild, he samples environmental sounds, from rainforest bird calls to migratory wildlife, and fuses them with contemporary electronic grooves, traditional percussion, and club influences.
In 2013, Axel moved from Trieste to London on a one-way ticket to pursue music production, eventually studying Sound Engineering for Music and Film with a focus on Spatial Audio. His work as a sound recordist and spatial designer has spanned projects for the Philharmonia Orchestra, BBC Springwatch, and The Guardian.
To push the boundaries of field recording, Axel, initially with his brother Ario, launched the Across Continents overlanding project (2023–2026). Driving through Europe and West Africa in 4x4s along migratory bird routes, they record rare bird calls, share immersive VR soundscapes and music with local communities, and transform the audio into new musical compositions.
On stage, Axel brings these soundscapes to life in multichannel live performances, including appearances at Glastonbury 2025, Shambala Festival, and Alexandra Palace alongside artist Sam Lee. His signature sound (a blend of house, funk, hip-hop, and jungle) is showcased on his 2024 debut EP, Wildifyed.
Released via Sounding Wild Records, a portion of all label royalties directly supports NGOs dedicated to wildlife and soundscape conservation.