Field Mic

31 plays

Detritus: Radio Regurgitation 
Bill Talsma

Created from discarded cassette tape collected over a three-year period from the streets of Chicago. Running time: 28:13

20 plays

My NUMBERS.FM set from 1.11.12

playlist 

18806 plays

99percentinvisible:

Episode 43- The Accidental Music of Imperfect Escalators

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“There’s a secret jazz seeping from Washington’s aging Metro escalators - those anemic metal walkways that fill our transit system…they honk and bleat and squawk…why are you still wearing those earbuds?”

-Chris Richards, “Move along with the soundtrack of Metro’s screechy, wailing escalators” The Washington Post, 01/14/11

Ever since the industrial revolution, when it became possible for products to be designed just once and then mass produced, it has been the slight imperfections and wear introduced by human use that has transformed a quality mass produced product into a thing we love. Your worn blue jeans, your grandmothers iron skillet, the initial design determined their quality, but it’s their imperfections that make them comfortable, that make them lovable, that make them yours.

And if you think that a “slightly broken” escalator can’t be lovable, then our own Sam Greenspan would like to introduce you to Chris Richards. Chris Richards is a music critic for the Washington Post, and after years of ignoring the wailing and screeching of the much maligned, often broken escalators in the DC Metro, he began to hear them in a new way. He began to hear them as music.

Notes:

• This story was adapted from one Sam Greenspan produced for his podcast, Whisper Cities, which tells stories of overlooked places and the people who find them.
• The designer of the first DC Metro stations was Harry Weese. Weese’s “Jailhouse Skyscraper” in downtown Chicago was profiled in 99% Invisible #26 by Dan Weissmann. The Metro ceilings may be brutalism at its best.

• If you don’t get the “Culs-de-sac” joke, listen to this episode.
• Radio producers Alex Van Oss and Charles Maynes also created their own Ballad of the DC Metro for Podstantsiya, a Moscow-based podcast and audio collective. (The site in in Russian, but the radio feature is in English.)

Also:

THANKS, RADIOLAB!  For a brief shining moment, 99% Invisible was the #2 podcast on iTunes, and #1 in both the Arts and Design categories. Thank you so much for checking out the show. If you’re new here, never fear, you did not miss a thing! All the past episodes are available for download and are great (you know, as a body of work, some are better than others). You can subscribe in iTunes or here is the RSS feed if you use another podcast catching device.

If you appreciated Radiolab telling you about the show, do us a huge favor and tell everyone you know to listen and subscribe. If the response that Jad and Robert has gotten is any indication, they will thank you for it!

Finally:

Let’s hear it! What’s your favorite sound that you know other people hear as just noise? Please leave a comment below.

41 plays

Here is a 2hr set of modern classical and ambient music I played on NUMBERS.FM the other night.

4 String Quartet No. 15 in E-Flat Minor Op. 144 (1974) IV- Nocturne (Adagio) Dmitri Shostakovich
Orson Welles - War of the Worlds
Rob Ellis - Music For the Home #8
Shousetsu - Radicalfashion
Das Buch der Klange (Part 1) - Hans Otte
Goats to Clear Brush - Cole Pierce
A quiet Morning arriving to the Valley - Opitope
interbellum - Elegi
Smyrneiko Minore - Marika Papagika
Harmonium Improvisation - George I. Gurdjieff
Proper Punctuation - Cole Pierce
Super Interlude Pt. 1 - Christina Vantzou
stop look listen : 68 : august 27, 2011 : dechans - Amy Martin
Igloo - Karen O & the Kids
Nue - Nils Frahm
Hike - Cinchel, T.Carter & Cole Pierce
Valla Torg Kraut - Mokira
Can’t - Northerner
Map - Mountains
Cardboard Cups - Piotr Kurek
Ijspret - Machinefabriek
Faithful Friend - The Humble Bee
On Waiting - Greg Haines & Wouter van Veldhoven
Variation 2 - Molly Berg + Stephen Vitiello
Field - Autistici
Untitled Found Cassette, Audio Diary - Cole Pierce
Chimaerica - Johann Johannsson
Powoli - Jacaszek
Budeie Med Sigd - Svarte Greiner
IV. A final shaking - de Waart, Edo
Section III - Chris Schlarb
Nixon Interlude - T.Carter
You Can Have What I Take - Klumpes Ahmad
Ammunition 3 - Seaworthy
The Red River - Micah Blue Smaldone
Think - Do Make Say Think
Number 33 - Jan & Lorraine

Part 2 
Ames Room
Cole Pierce Mix 

1. Tendrils In Vigne -Gregg Kowalsky 
2. Death and Possible Dreams- Roam The Hello Clouds 
3. Au Clair de la Lune-French folk song (1860 Phonautogram) -Phonautogram byÉdouard-Léon Scott de Martinville 
4. Reversed Flames -Tape 
5. Untitled Found Tape, Answering Machine Messages -Cole Pierce
6. Uusi Aamu- Hannu 
7. Disconnected- Twine

Ames Room pt 1 
Cole Pierce Mix 
2008 

Word - Cole Pierce Mix

2011

30 plays

Piano & Cass 
Chris Hefner 

40 plays

43 seconds of an interview with author Sue Townsend.
This sample can be found near the end of Go Lightly.

Found Sound by Greg Murphy
“A short film I made documenting the rehabilitation of discarded audio tape found on the side of the road.”