Energy & Climate
‘Evolution is the revolution’
Amber Nuttall, co-founder & creative director of Extreme Hangout, on what we need from London Climate Action Week.
21 June 2025
This article first appeared in our COP30 special issue of My Green Pod Magazine. Click here to subscribe to our digital edition and get each issue delivered straight to your inbox
Main image: Carl Hayden Smith connecting with an old cedar tree
Music can connect us in moments of joy and grief; it can lift our spirits and make our hearts soar in community, and is equally able to reach us in our deepest and most isolated states and spaces.
Yet we know so little about how this relationship works, or how music could be used as a force for good by elevating consciousness in all living beings.
Carl Hayden Smith and Caz Coronel are working at the intersection of sound, nature, science and consciousness. They recently became ‘OMMMbassadors’, joining OMMM’s network of leaders and creators who are dedicated to elevating global consciousness through spiritual engagement and environmental stewardship.
They told us how music has shaped their lives – and why we must never forget to listen.
CARL HAYDEN SMITH
Associate Professor of Media at UEL & founder of the Museum of Consciousness
For as long as I can remember, I’ve been fascinated by the invisible – by the frequencies, fields and patterns that shape reality but often go unheard.
My journey through sound and nature has been a continuous feedback loop; I have been learning to deeply listen and to help others do the same.
Over the past decade, my work has revolved around what I call hyperhumanism: a reimagining of technology not as a distraction from our humanity, but as a mirror that can re-awaken it.
Rather than outsourcing our awareness to machines, we can design tools that expand perception, deepen compassion and serve to reconnect us with the intelligence of nature.
This philosophy underpins everything I create, from my regenerative research at the University of East London to my work with the Museum of Consciousness (MOC), a global project I founded to explore how sound can alter consciousness.
At its heart, the museum is a living experiment: we invite artists – from Jon Hopkins to Orbital, from Lisa Lashes and Tom Middleton to Alexandre Tannous – to produce audio experiences that reliably induce expanded states of awareness.
However, it is not just about listening; it’s about relationship.
The artist transmits their sound. The audience responds – not as consumers, but as co-creators and co-investigators. Then, through dialogue and reflection, we integrate what was learned.
Over time, this circular process becomes a regenerative loop of shared consciousness.
My invitation to become an OMMMbassador felt like a natural extension of this work. OMMM is a constellation of kindred spirits, artists, scientists, healers and innovators united by a simple but radical idea: that sound, gratitude and intention are technologies of the heart, and the journey from the head to the heart is the greatest journey of all.
This November, that mission will take us to one of Earth’s most sacred places: the Bolivian Amazon. With OMMM, Amazon for Life and local elders, we’re creating Love Your Mother – the World’s First Concert for Nature, a short film, sound study and offering for Mother Earth.
The Amazon is more than a location; it is consciousness itself.
The MOC will lead a study observing how water, plants and the environment respond to intention and song.
It’s both analysis and ceremony; a merging of Indigenous wisdom and modern research, rooted in reverence and resonance.
The elders will open the space with prayer and sound, and the musicians will offer songs as gifts, not performances.
Nature will be our audience, and every vibration will become part of the forest’s feedback loop.
The camera won’t impose a story – it will listen, moving like wind through leaves.
The resulting film, which will premiere at COP30, will be a love letter to the Earth, and a reminder that our inner state directly shapes our world.
For me, this project is about developing an ‘ecology for the re-enchantment of life’ and restoring our capacity for wonder.
We live in an age that measures everything yet understands so little of what it means to be alive.
The Amazon teaches us that the planet is not a machine but is fully responsive and relational. When we meet it with gratitude, it reverberates.
We are not here to save the planet; we are here to remember that we are the planet, we are nature and every cell of our being vibrates in rhythm with the rivers, the soil and the stars.
My hope is that through sound we can find our way back. When we listen deeply enough, the separation between self and world dissolves.
There is only one song playing, and it’s been playing since the beginning of time. When we quiet the noise and tune our attention, we can finally hear it again.
The Earth, the plants and the trees are all singing – all we must do is learn how to listen.
CAZ CORONEL
Composer, sound designer, producer & DJ
For many years my life was a wild ride of dizzying highs and crushing lows.
I was brought up in a deeply religious family, whose main life lesson was that I did not exist and that my emotions were not real. Ironically, this message was delivered with aggressive passion.
By the time I was 16 I was a total mess of an unformulated identity, with extreme rapid-cycling bipolar.
Questions such as ‘who am I?’ and ‘what is real?’ haunted my life, and the search for authenticity became my life’s mission.
This treacherous journey led me in countless directions, but one constant called me: music.
At the same time crippling insecurity made performing a near-insurmountable mountain for me to climb.
In August 2022 I found Carl Hayden Smith at Medicine Festival. He asked me, in a multi-dimensional kind of way, if I knew anyone who made music with a specific purpose.
I had been creating music for years but had rarely played it to anyone – though a recent encounter caused me to reply that yes, I did.
Just weeks before, I had been invited to the Monroe Institute to trial a new programme it was running.
One of the trainers, Robert, asked me (jokingly, I later found out) to create a track that would put him in an enlightened state. No small ask! But the seed was planted and later that day the ingredients for this track came to me in a meditation. ‘Paracusia for Robert’ was born.
A month later I played my first Museum of Consciousness (MOC) – in a tiny tipi with one small Bluetooth speaker – to three people.
Even though I was a bit annoyed by the poor sound system, this was probably the biggest concert I could have handled at the time.
Besides, having three people enjoy my music felt even better than DJing to thousands of people, something I was doing quite regularly at this point.
I am forevergrateful to Carl for giving me this opportunity as it was my first step to performing.
I started to create more functional music with purpose and playing more and more Museums of Consciousness. Carl found us increasingly fantastic places to play!
Along the way we have met so many incredible artists who all make music with purpose, often with a strong scientific background.
Carl asked me to help him organise things so I created strategies to make the MOC run more efficiently.
Months later I sent ‘Paracusia for Robert’ back to the Monroe Institute to have brain entrainment added. These are modulating tones that encourage the brain into certain states. I asked for tones that might help with getting enlightened.
Without my knowledge it was then played at one of the Institute’s workshops and a lady, Sheila Schwartz, actually had an enlightened experience!
When Sheila found out that I wrote it, she and her husband offered to fund me to learn everything I could about what had created this response in her.
One of the results of this funding was to conduct experiments in Philadelphia using EEG machines and stroboscopic light to see what was going on in people’s brains as they listened.
We experimented with tracks with and without brain entrainment to observe the differences.
I became fascinated by scientifically demonstrating what I intuitively knew: that music is a powerful healing tool and that intention is key.
My intention became solidified: to put more love in the world and to elevate consciousness. I truly believe this is what is needed to stop the destruction of our planet and help heal humanity.
Once this goal was set, intuition became an aligned guide that I followed wholeheartedly.
I started travelling the world, visiting sacred sites and places of high energy where I knew sound was key to the magic.
These were places of power where I could learn about sound and create and channel more music.
My journey eventually led me to OMMM, where I found other people who were guided with love, intent and intuition to co-create harmony and wellbeing on our planet. I instantly knew I had found my people.
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