The culture-link repository BoingBoing.net today referenced (here) a pair of websites that host audio files of the sweet, blissfully robotic music that plays in Japanese railways (here and here). Shortly thereafter, a journalist wrote in to direct BoingBoing readers to a three-minute NPR report he had done on the sounds (site here, RealAudio stream here) in September 2003. According to the broadcast, a Japan railway spokesman explained “the idea is to alleviate the kind of commuter anxiety that drives passengers to jam themselves into already crowded trains.” Reportedly, the sound of iron bells in a Zen temple inspired some of the earliest of these synthesized melodies.
5 Most Recent Posts
5 Most Recent Comments
icastico: "It’s a cool project. Thanks for setting it up. A thought I had. It might be nice, eventually to..."
JaN PuLSFoRD: "Interestingly what to some people is ‘an everyday domestic sound’ is to others a rarity..."
all n4tural: "i remember that! very funny. i was smiling out loud at a lot of the tweets under that hash, gave me a..."
all n4tural: "ah, the plot thickens: http://www.npr.org/templates/s tory/story.php?storyId=5041495 “New tests..."
all n4tural: "just came across this: “Did Ben Franklin kill Beethoven and Mozart?”..."
twitter @disquiet status
- #dronelife RT @cjherbert Listening on headphones: "that sounds great" only to discover it was muffled washing machine in background 3 hrs ago
- More updates...
Topics
8-bit android app audio-games chiptune classical comics copyleft demix field-recording film forum-digger free gadget generative i-hop installation ios ipad iphone ipod ipod touch jazz junto live-performance mp3 discussion group netlabel noise reactive remix rock science-fiction score silence site-maintenance sketches of sound software sound-art stems turntablism TV video video-games voice year's best-
RSS
This site's RSS/XML feed.
More information on RSS. Subscribe