Transom offers up a new work, about a man struggling with obesity, which perhaps stretches the definition of what is an "audio" production. I mean that only for the purposes of this site. They actually call it multimedia but the sound rich production and de-emphasized and choppy (but brilliant) animation and the piece's aurally innovative, sound-driven nature does make this piece an audio doc to me. Maybe. At any rate, that's really neither here nor there. It is really cool and it comes from Transom so, it gets posted.
Studio 360 brings the Barret Golding Story about the YouTube sensation "Auto Tune the News." Awesome!
UPDATE:Producer Barrett Golding posted the full piece on Hearing Voices -- longer than what aired on Studio 360. Click on "Auto Tune News" above for a link.
From the site: "explores a forgotten chapter in the history of South African music-the role of punk rock. Originally broadcast in the Czech Republic, the audio documentary Waking The Nation sketches out the fascinating and often overlooked story of punk rock, ska and post-punk music as it played out against the background of the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa in the late '70s and 1980s."
In honor of 09/09/9 -- The longest Beatles song. Rumored to reveal John saying "turn me on dead man" when played backward. Here is a link to the backward track and some background from a website called beatlesnumber9.com. You be the judge.
A vintage doc about New York at the tail end of a now bygone era. The doc's sounds were recorded in time square in the early nineties - before Disney and Giuliani got to it, before 9-11, before the precipitous drop in crime, before the lawn chairs... An amazing, sound-rich doc about the religious zealots in the square.
Saltcast (the audio blog of the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies) features a story about a producer doing a story about swingers - yep, those swingers. To use or not to use "graphic" audio...
Hearing Voices recently featured a piece from this series:
Mixing music, dialogue from soundtracks, press conferences, sound effects and other sources, shortcuts has presented a wide variety of themes over the past thirty years, including programs on growing up, growing old, going crazy, being afraid, alone, in love; shows on music, space, race and politics from Watergate to Whitewater, plus retrospectives featuring the major events of each passing year. Recorded and mixed digitally, shortcuts features no narration, it's message evolves from the careful juxtaposition of the various elements.
Fox hunting on horseback, with hounds, is alive in cold, wet Ireland. The Irish Times have produced this engaging audio slideshow on the Waterford Hunt.
A Radio New Zealand tale of motorcycles, romance, and reflexology. Plus ghosts.
The weekly documentary Spectrum profiles a woman who moved from a trailer in Australia and and her corporate job, to New Zealand and a life in alternative therapies.
An old sofa, and an upholsterer who is a powerlifting world champion. Mighty Mac won a Special Award at the Prix Europa in 2009. An engaging, endearing and vivid documentary, with strong accents.
Britain's most renowned natural sound recordist, Chris Watson, has been to Antarctica. In this enhanced podcast, he provides just enough details to set the scene – and then lets the sounds bring you there. Some of the most engrossing audio you'll hear.
Elizabeth Hauke's documentary 'The Sound of Disease "examines the use of sound in the diagnosis of disease, and features the ground-breaking work of Prof Dan Lloyd, who converts the data in brain scans into music to identify otherwise 'invisible' diseases." Elizabeth Hauke is an independent radio presenter and producer of Short Science (www.shortscience.co.uk), a weekly science radio show and podcast. She also makes freelance packages and documentaries.
Local traditions about St Patrick abound in Ireland, and this RTÉ documentary looked at one, in 1981, with the first visit to a rocky island by humans for hundreds of years.
Who knew Vietnam is suddenly a player in the world coffee market? And who knew the coffee beans they grow are some of the most potent available? Roz Bluett from Australia's Radio National knew, and you will too as Roz takes us on this eye-opening java journey.
Michael Paul Mason is an author and radio producer. So he knew a good story when he pulled into St. Joseph, Mo. "I don't often see the word 'psychiatric' paired with 'museum,'" says Mason. But there it was: The Glore Psychiatric Museum. Michael takes us inside in this offbeat and deliciously creepy piece.
Sound Tourism maps places worth a visit because they sound so good. In this example, curator Trevor Cox, Professor of Acoustic Engineering at the University of Salford, UK, introduces the great Stalacpipe Organ in Virgina, USA. By tapping stalactites with mallets, it claims to be the world's largest natural musical instrument.
Long before the Tea Party movement, the hills of West Virginia were echoing with a cultural clash over textbook content. This 2010 Peabody Award Winner comes from American Radio Works and was produced by Terry Kay and edited by Deborah George.
From the Pacific Radio From the Vault series. Audio from the very first Earth Day in New York 1970.
From the site:
"We’ll begin with Pete Seeger from the Main stage at Union Square in Manhattan, singing with Reverend Frederick Douglas Kirkpatrick. Then, a WBAI reporter with a portable recorder will happen upon Allen Ginsberg sitting in a lotus position holding a daisy amongst the thousands of Earth Day participants… later, Ginsberg would address the masses from the stage, as would Margaret Meade and Odetta."
Pédilüv is a radio art programme, produced at Campus Radio in Paris. This episode, The Sound of Noise, has more English language content than usual, from a range of sources: The Global Theatre of the Air, Adam Boham, The Poo Lord, John Cage, and the BBC Radiophonic Workshop. It's curious, and curiously engaging.
NPR's All Things Considered just turned 39. Hard to imagine but it's first day it featured a 24 minute documentary of a war protest. Click the link to listen.
Chicago writer Bill Hillman puts you in the middle of the every-man-for-himself chaos of Pamplona's running of the bulls. A recent winner in the Edward R. Murrow Awards for electronic journalism.
A sound rich journey down one of London's arterial roads, Caledonian Road, from The Guardian. Up The Cally is an engaging mix of local characters, narrator, music and sound. Plus it's available as a clickable map and audio slideshow.
In an exclusive interview with AudioDocumentary.org, the producer, Francesca Panetta tells how making the piece has affected her.
Sound Transit brings you wherever you wish to go – in sound. Click the aircraft, select the cities you'd like to visit, and the website gives you a choice of itineraries. They all cost the same (a few minutes of your time) but give you a choice of stopovers. Chose your route and the website will prepare a unique mp3 of field recordings from each place.
Danish features go North American – the Third Coast International Festival's Julie Shapiro guides a listening event in Denmark, with a selection of engaging radio from the USA and Canada.
Third Ear is a Danish features project, and this is their first instalment entirely in English, under the banner of Third Ear International.
A World War II veteran, Gerald Flower, recalls candidly and vividly his time as a tail-gunner. The facts and emotions of bombing raids, and of falling behind the German lines.
An enveloping tour of the largest inland body of water in the British Isles, Lough Neagh. Tom Lawrence guides you on his adventures around the lake, with a modest manner that allows the richness of the environment reach out and grab you by the ears. From Touch Radio.
A little insight into creating the sounds of transformers – those trucks and planes and whatnot that become robots. Close your eyes and it's like they're changing in front of you.
The artist Marcus Coates recorded the dawn chorus in English woodlands; he then slowed down the recordings, and filmed human singers perform the newly approachable songs in everyday English settings. Then, he speeded the footage back up again. The sound is extraordianary – and in this case, so is the video.
