A couple recent StoryCorps intervus—
Antoinette Franklin (R) and her niece, Iriel Franklin, talk about relocating to Houston after Hurricane Katrina (2:40):
Peg Steinberg and her son, Dan, talk about Peg’s battle with cancer (2:07):
Exquisite field recordist (and ex-Cabaret Voltaire band member) Chris Watson has new site up with news, bio, and downloads.
Form Touch Sampler 3, Chris Watson, “Out of Our Sight” (2:59 mp3):
“Motionless anticipation, along the dry sandy banks of the Zambesi a Mozambique nightjar is sucking in all the remaining light.”
This week’s HV cast: The last half of A Hot & Dry Summer Special, hosted by Ben Adair of APM Weekend America: The Quiet American (Aaron Ximm) sound-captures the forbidding warning signs rattling in a harsh wind and “Desert Sun” outside the nuclear Nevada Test Site north of Las Vegas. Back in the early 1990s, SLC producer Scott Carrier found the Basin & Range, near Nevada’s “Battle Mountain,” beautiful, lonely, dreary, and full of sagebrush, solace and stories. And more of Bernie Krause’s Desert Solitudes. A special from Hearing Voices, “Desert Air 2- of 2” (29:00 mp3):
Another band on the free net label Comfort Stand Recordings I’ve been playing lately (like The Coconut Monkeyrocket) with an affinity for audio appropriation is Martinibomb.
Martinibomb, “The Love God” (4:54 mp3):
Martinibomb, “cha l’ectro cha cha” (5:32 mp3):
This week’s HV cast: The first half of A Hot & Dry Summer Special, hosted by Ben Adair of APM Weekend America: Coyotes, owls, frogs and songbirds are part of Desert Solitudes, recorded by Bernie Krause and Ruth Happel in the Sonoran and Chihuauan deserts, part of New Mexico’s panhandle. Host Ben Adair heads down to the ghost towns, Opera Houses, century-old abandoned mines, and billion-year old boulders along Death Valley’s “Mojave Road.” And Kraut-rockers Faust dial in “Long Distance Calls in the Desert,” from their album Rien. A special from Hearing Voices, “Desert Air 1- of 2” (23:00 mp3):
Jim Nayder’s The Annoying Music Show! presented an NPR Annoying Music Tribute to Elvis. Among the excrutiating impersonators and cringe-inducing covers, was this gem–
From his album Blowing Goats, the Pakistani-Chicagoan, Piranha Man, with “Viva Las Vegas” (1:57 mp3):
(Want more P-Man?: “Eye of the Tiger.”)
This week’s HV cast: A community radio station in Gondar, Ethiopia broadcasts health education programs on subjects ranging from HIV/AIDS prevention to the dangers of using dirty tattoo needles. A story by jake Warga, “Radio Gondar” (2:33 mp3):
The new Nature Conservancy/Visa-funded radio series, Stories from the Heart of the Land, is out (producers: Jay Allison & Emily Botein; music: Bill Frisell). Lotsa talented indies contributed pieces, including several of us from HV — Ann & Kara, Scott, me. Here’s a taste, Kitchen Sisters, “Cry Me A River” (16:39):
Stations: the series is free at PRX.
It’s true, I’m a sucker for vox-sampling bands. One of the most rhythmic of the spoken-weird snippet genre is The Coconut Monkeyrocket. Their new CD is With Birds (emusic). Their site has mp3s, as does (the excellent “free music Net Label”) Comfort Stand.
Try “Accidental Beatnik” (3:51 mp3):
And “Shopping For Explosives” (3:48 mp3):
This week’s HV cast: Great literature allows us to learn to empathize with the experiences of others. So how is it a man now on trial for crimes against humanity is an avid reader of fiction? Might he simple be reading the wrong books? A trip to The Hague to hand-deliver the ‘right’ books to Slobodan Milosevic. A story by Ben Walker, “Remedial Theory” (13:29 mp3):
WFMU posted Ralph Records 1987 “Collection of Folk Songs,” Potatoes. There’s mp3s by well-known weirdos like Negativland, artist Howard Finster, Mark Mothersbaugh, and Bongwater. My faves are the archive-sampled prison work songs and sounds by Rhythm and Noise, “Bertas Hammer” (3:16):
And at KGLT we wore the grooves of this get-back-at-ex-boyfren anon a-capella, “The Billy Bee Song” (1:24)”
Audio art from Brian Joseph Davis:
During April of 2006, I ran a recording studio at Mercer Union. Passersby were stopped and asked to sing, from memory and with no practice, the Beatles’ Yesterday. They were given headphones with an instrumental track to help them out. If they couldn’t remember the words, they were told to “just make it up.†Everyone was paid a $5.00 performance fee. I then took all the versions recorded and created a mix featuring 60 layered individual tracks of people trying to remember the words.
Brian Joseph Davis, “Yesterduh” (3:39):
Soundsnap: “share free sound effects and loops.” From animals to audio art, available in .mp3 and .wav. Mix, match, & montage:
bass chord
horse
bowling ball
This week’s HV cast is Sleepless in Tbilisi. A twenty-four hour tour, from Turkish baths to Batumi beaches, through the country of Georgia. High-speed sight-seeing driven by the accidental tourguide: “a ‘detective,’ or ‘special police,’ or ‘security force.’ It’s not clear. Sometimes he even says ‘KGB,’ though that no longer exists… does it?” A story by Larry Massett, “Long Day on the Road” (14:52) mp3):
RadioSutton posted a clip from WOUB-Athens OH the acurrately imagines How Listeners Hear Fundraising (1:50):
This week’s HV cast is a trip to Easter Island to gather recordings of local musicians and theories on who made and moved the “moai,” the ilse’s famous stone heads. A mystery of aliens, archeologists; and arboreal emptiness: What happened to all the trees? A story by Jack Chance, “Big Stone Heads” (6:09 mp3):
This week’s HV cast is a portrait of the non-fiction writer Charles Bowden, told by the people he’s written about and the editors he’s worked with. Bowden lives in Tucson, Arizona, and has written extensively on the cultural and physical environment of the Southwest. His style is both harsh and beautiful, and somewhat painful to read, as he takes the position that we are all to blame, or perhaps that there is no one is to blame, for the violent and destructive acts committed against nature and society. He writes about child molesters, drug traffickers, savings and loan executives, real estate developers, and crooked politicians in a way that implicates all of us. And so his work has been largely ignored. These interviews, hopefully, will help end his anonymity. A story by Scott Carrier, “The Thing Just Beyond Our Reach” (22:41 mp3):
From Salon.com Audio George Plimpton does a damn fine reading of Denis Johnson’s short story (from Seek: Reports from the Edges of America and Beyond) about the Rainbow Gathering, “Hippies” (18:02 mp3):
One of three mp3s on an old post at Salon.com Audio, Mark Z. Danielewski performs from his book House of Leaves to music by his sister Poe, off of Haunted, “Hey Pretty” (3:50 mp3):