The Orb often makes ambient-electro music out of spoken-voice snippets using of the rhythm of the speech. Their best-known spoke-sampled-song (details on clips used below) is from 1991, off The Orb’s Adventures Beyond the Ultraworld, “Little Fluffy Clouds:”
Wikipedia has a complete history of the song. Sampled are Ennio Morricone’s “The Man With The Harmonica” (soundtrack to Once Upon a Time in the West) and “Electric Counterpoint” composed by Steve Reich and performed by guitarist Pat Metheny. The voice is Rickie Lee Jones from a promotional interview. Reich was “flattered.” Jones sued.
In 2007 Alan Parker: Urban Warrior (comedian Simon Munnery) parodied the song on BBC Radio 1 announcer Annie Nightingale‘s compilation Y4K— The Orb & Alan Parker, “Grey Clouds” (2:30 mp3):
I’m a sucker for Emily Dickinson, and for Sean Cole‘s radio pieces, including his latest in which Billy Collins seduces poor Emily and Sean gets misty-eyed over a piece of string. From Studio 360‘s American Icons series, Sean Cole “Because I Could Not Stop for Death” (13:24 mp3):
The internet can still surprise. Years ago we grew tired of Stevie Nicks diaphanous-ness. But lo+behold long comes a backstage video catching in the spontaneous act of…… no, not throwing a tantrum, nor snorting controlled substances with underage hermaphrodites, but rather: “Stevie is singing Love in Store and then Wild Heart in her dressing room while Robin is putting on Stevie’s make up and Lori sings back up.” Reminding us all what a lovely voice she has, “Stevie Nicks Wild Heart- extended:’
In DRUNKEN GHOSTS OF BURMA, Music For Maniacs posts a couple cuts Music of Nat Pwe, the Folk & Pop Music of Myanmar (Burma). “It’s all fairly bat-shit crazy (to use the ethnomusicological terminology.)… Nats are spirits who met tragic or violent deaths, so I would imagine there’s a lot of them around Myanmar lately.”
This is Sein Moota peforming “Pay Kyaw Chit Tae Doe (Father Kyaw Loves His Son)” (3:56 mp3):
Interviews gathered from Mae Sot, Thailand (same town from which all land-transported aid is entering Burma) with medical workers and Burmese migrant laborers who work in Thailand but sleep in Burma. From Jack Chance, aired this week on The World, “Burma Aid Efforts” (3:30 mp3):
Here’s Chance’s more accurate Cyclone report w/ the other story, not being told: the Burmese elections. No one would run this, so we’ll post it, “Irawaddy Delta Blues” (5:10 mp3): More…
The massive audio empire that is North Country Public Radio has added the HV series to its roster of fine programming. You can now hear HV hours weekly, Saturdays at 4pm, on NCPR‘s 7 station transmitters and 25 translators blanketing Northern New York.
A few other fine pubradio stations have added HV’s weekly hours to their lineup. WEMC-FM 91.7 in Harrisonburg VA now runs our series Sundays at 9pm. WPTC-FM 88.1 in Williamsport PA has us on a couple times weekly: Saturday 5am & Sunday at noon. And Pittsburgh’s WDUQ-FM 90.5 starts airing HV in July.
Our station list has all the HV times, places, and frequencies, now broadcasting on 41 stations and 38 translators.
[Mr. Massett explains why the media explanations of the mortgage crisis explain nothing.]
When the US credit markets began to blow up last year, every newspaper in the country served up two explanations for the mess: “sub-prime mortgage” and “collaterized debt obligation,” or “CDO.”
A sub-prime mortgage sounds bad on the face of it, so no problem there. But CDO has no obvious meaning. Only a few days ago I watched an NPR journalist try to figure it out from the words themselves (“let’s see, ‘collateralized’ refers to ‘collateral,’ so there must be a thing like a house or a car someplace, and ‘debt’ means, well, debt, and an ‘obligation’ means, um, you have to do something, right?”) The usual fudge is to drape the riddle with adjectives like “opaque,” “complex,” and “hard to understand,” as if these were explanatory principles. The phrase “complex and opaque financial instruments known as CDO’s” doesn’t tell you anything, really, but at least it sounds bad. Dern near as bad as a sub-prime mortgage. Moving right along, in other news…
The trouble is CDO’s were never meant for the average investor, or the average journalist. They are Wall Street inventions designed for the big players, investment banks like Citi or Merill or Bear Sterns. To understand them you have to think like an investment bank. This is no harder than thinking like a Martian. More…
The Mountain Music Project went lookng for connections between the music of Appalachia and the Himalayas. They found ’em. The film will be finished by end of 2008 (produced by HV’s Jack Chance). The trailer is out now and gorgeous, “A Higher Lonesome Sound:”
Summize Conversational Search’s “mission is to discover the topics and attitudes expressed within online conversations. Our home page currently features realtime conversations on Twitter.”
For instance here’s “hearing voices” summized:
Summize sez they’ll soon add blogs, reviews, and other online chatter. Some particularly entrancing summizing is hapnin’ with the “love hate think believe feel wish” of twistori.
Long-time radio producer and Alaskan luminary, Geo Beach is hosting a History channel TV series titled Tougher in Alaska. Makes sense cuz da Beach boy is tough and in AK. Starts this Thurs, May 8- 10pm ET.
Video, photos, and a Geo bio (“logger, firefighter and medic, and commercial fisherman”) at the series site.
Hearing Voices from NPR®:
009 Shoah— For Holocaust Remembrance Day
Host— Rabbi Samuel Cohon of Temple Emanuel, Tucson
Airdates— 4/30/2008 – 5/7/2008
Rabbi Samuel Cohon of Too Jewish Radio, presents stories of survivors, for Holocaust Remembrance Day:
In “Descended from the Holocaust” Dr. Alan Berkenwald records his trip with his parents to the Holocaust Museum — it was first time they talked openly about their experience in the concentration camps; this audio diary is of Jay Allison’s Life Stories.
“Yom Hashoah 1994” is Shoah services in Billings MT and Cleveland OH, survivor interviews, and the story of the Billings communities united “Not in Our Town” response that stopped a series of anti-Jewish crimes. The Rhino Records documentary project “Voices of the Shoah: Remembrances of the Holocaust” is drawn from interviews with 180 survivors.
Also survivors sing Hebrew, for the first time in years, in a live May 1945 BBC report by Patrick Gordon Walker from the just liberated “Belsen Concentration Camp.”
Somehow our NPR: Hearing Voices Podcast, which debuted last week, has hit #42 on iTunes® Top Podcasts. Right over the NBC Nightly News. Not far from Ask a Ninja and NPR Story of the Day. ‘Course the commanding Oprah and Ira hours hold the #1 and #2 spots, many rows above us, but ‘least we’re on the same list.
I love it while traveling when an HV story comes on the radio. That happened a slew of times this past week (Mtn Gorrillas of Rwanda, Passover poem, Peace Rabbi). The first one I caught crossing the NV desert on NPR Day to Day. It’s another from Jack Chance, international man of trad music mystery…
The Kingdom of Nepal became a democracy this week, holding it’s first elections for representatives who will write the new constitution and are likely to abolish the monarchy. Chance speaks with a young musician in Kathmandu, Rubin Gandharba, whose songs (played on the Nepali sarangi) became a rallying cry for the Nepali Democracy Movement. The call Ruben the “Nepali Bob Dylan” (2:57 mp3):
A day-in-the-life of Rabbi Arik Ascherman with Rabbis for Human Rights in Jerusalem. He interacts with Arabs and Jews, and intercedes when he can during Palestinian home demolitions. He looks for common ground amongst the the rubble and rocks, the M-16s and tanks, and the two religions that started as one. (Photos by Jake Warga.)
Aired on PRI The World; by producer Jake Warga, “Rabbi for Human Rights, Israel” (6:57 mp3):
The traditional, 1000-year-old song Dayenu is a part of the Jewish Passover (April 19-27 2008). This piece is an audio essay, a poem of sorts, on the song, the holy day, and what, if anything, the tales of Egyptian first-borns and parted Red Seas have to do with us today. Original music by Frank London, founder of the Klezmatics. Aired on APM Weekend America; by producer Judith Sloan of Crossing the BLVD, “Dayenu (for Passover)” (6:15 mp3):
I’m a sucker for 
In 
Interviews gathered from Mae Sot, Thailand (same town from which all land-transported aid is entering Burma) with medical workers and Burmese migrant laborers who work in Thailand but sleep in Burma. From 
The massive audio empire that is 
Rabbi Samuel Cohon of 
A day-in-the-life of Rabbi Arik Ascherman with 
The traditional, 1000-year-old song Dayenu is a part of the Jewish Passover (April 19-27 2008). This piece is an audio essay, a