New Tunes: Sounds of the wild

Last year a lone zebra was ambling through the Namibian Desert when he stumbled across an extraordinary sight: a recording studio.

A cry of amazement escaped his snout. That cry is one of the signature sounds for the song What would we be on electro swing band Goodluck's latest album, Creatures of the Night.

Studios are usually made with thickly padded walls, but for band member and producer Ben Peters the desert was the perfect place to try to record something remarkable.

Peters' quest for "the quietest place in the world" led him, along with the band, a film crew and a few hundred kilograms of studio equipment, to the Namibian desert.

"It was sensational. When we took these recordings to be mixed in the UK the guy we were working with could not believe we had done them outside," said Juliet Harding, Goodluck's lead singer.

"He kept saying, 'You guys are lying to me', until we showed him the video footage."

For Peters, recording in endless sand dunes was about more than just finding a quirky place to work.

"It wasn't just about recording in that space [the desert]. It was about recording the sounds that were there. We've got zebras and the sound of the Skeleton Coast breakers washing up against the shore that gives this crazy white noise effect. All of the shaker sounds on the album are from the different sands we found in the desert," said Peters.

In typical Goodluck fashion the result is a sound that is harder to pin down than an eel in a tub of baby oil.

"We don't stick to one kind of sound. We just make electronic music and stick to the mantra that the song is the hero. When we make music we go for what sounds good as opposed to making something that sounds like what we normally make," said Harding.

Peters said: "I personally hate genres. I don't like this idea that electronic music should be separated into all these different components."

Making music in a desert comes with its own unique set of challenges. In the 40C heat, the crew nearly quit, and on one occasion the wind threatened to scupper any chance they had of recording anything.

Fortune favours the brave, however, and the band has successfully created an album and a sound that is even more genre-bending than their last.

• 'Creatures of the Night' is available now. The band has been nominated for two SAMAs.