About Cosmo
Cosmo Sheldrake is a multi-instrumentalist performer and composer, live improviser, field recordist and anthropologist. His first album The Much Much How How and I, came out in 2018. Subsequent releases include Wake Up Calls (2020), an album composed entirely from recordings of endangered British birds; Wild Wet World (2023), a homage to the ocean created from recordings of whales, seals, fish, snapping shrimp and coral reefs; and Eye to the Ear (2024). In 2026 he released Come Along, a children’s book illustrated by Argentine cartoonist Liniers and based on his hit song of the same name. In 2026, Cosmo created the soundtrack for the Warner Bros film Digger (October 2026), directed by Alejandro Iñárritu and starring Tom Cruise.
Cosmo has composed for the Cirque de Soleil (2020), organised community choirs, and co-written and produced with a range of artists including Johnny Flynn and Robert Macfarlane. Alongside his numerous solo tours, he has opened shows for The Prodigy, Sylvan Esso, Johnny Flynn, and Bombay Bicycle Club, among others. He collaborated with Simon McBurney and Crystal Pite on Figures in Extinction. With Cecilia Vicuña in her exhibition Arch Future and her upcoming exhibition at MOCA titled Quipu of Encounters: The Dream of Water.
Cosmo’s field recording is informed by a degree in anthropology and a practice of deep listening. In recent years, he has travelled on expeditions as a field recordist and acoustic ecologist with his brother, the biologist Merlin Sheldrake, and other leading researchers and scholars including Robert Macfarlane, Giuliana Furci (of the Fungi Foundation, and Toby Kiers (of SPUN). Cosmo is on the advisory board of the Fungi Foundation; he works closely with the Fungi Foundation’s Elders Program, and co-authored their ethnomycological guidelines. He has collaborated with the ecologist Steve Simpson and his lab at Bristol University, and the sound recordist and acoustic ecologist Bernie Krause.
Cosmo is a core member of the More-Than-Human-Life Program, a group made up of philosophers, lawyers, judges, artists, indigenous leaders, and scientists working across disciplines to deepen and expand legal frameworks to find new ways to protect the living world. In collaboration with Cesar Rodriguez-Garavito (MOTH, NYU), Robert MacFarlane, and Giuliana Furci (Fungi Foundation), he released ‘Song of the Cedars’ as part of a campaign to create a legal path towards acknowledging the Los Cedros cloud forest – and the living world more generally – as a vital creative force. A children’s book based on the song will be released in November 2026.
Cosmo is committed to engaging musically with the living world and through his record labels, Tardigrade Records and MOTH Records, has pioneered an approach to sharing royalties, directly returning funds to projects and organisations working to protect the creatures and places that feature in his music. For example, 50% of the publishing royalties of the songs on ‘Wake Up Calls’ and ‘Wild Wet World’ are distributed to conservation organisations and charities working with the animals and ecosystems featured. Cosmo is also an ambassador of Earth Percent through which a percentage of his royalties are distributed to organisations addressing the climate and biodiversity crises.
Some nice words from others
“He perceives the daily world around him, definitely with a child-like curiosity and wonder but also with a fair measure of genius .”
— The Guardian
“Cosmo mongers everything from hedgerow pastorals to high-grade, rusted thrump.”
— Ernest Plimsole
“Genuinely great British eccentric.”
— dots and dashes
