46,700,000: Amount in dollars Amazon must pay due to an Alexa-related “speech recognition and natural language processing” patent legal case
65: Targeted maximum noise level, in decibels, in Brussels, where fountains, among other approaches, are addressing with the problem
60: Peak noise level, in decibels (and the lowest in five years), recorded during 2022 Diwali activities (Gurgaon, Haryana, India)
Sources: Amazon (reuters.com), Brussels (archinect.com), noise (indiatimes.com)
At the end of the introduction to each issue of my This Week in Sound email newsletter I swap in a new sonic verb. This index is the regularly updated list of the words I’ve used. If you have a favorite you don’t see here, let me know. I may use it down the road. Thanks.
babble, bang, bark, bawl, bay, belch, beep, blow, boing, bombinate, burble, burr, buzz, cackle, cantillate, cheep, chirm, chirp, chirr, chirrup, chitter, churr, clang, clank, clatter, clink, clunk, coo, crack, crackle, crash, croak, croon, crunch, cry, ding, dong, drone, echo, echolocate, fizzle, gasp, groan, growl, gurgle, hack, harmonize, hiss, honk, hoot, howl, hum, intone, jingle, keen, lub, mewl, moan, mumble, murmur, mutter, nasalize, oscillate, outgribe, plop, plunk, pop, pow, pulse, purr, psithurate , rattle, resound, ring, rip, roar, rumble, rustle, scrape, scream, screech, shimmer, shout, shriek, sibilate, sigh, sign, smack, sneeze, sniff, sniffle, snore, snort, sough, splash, splat, sputter, squall, squeak, squeal, squish, susurrate, swish, thud, tinkle, toot, thrum, thwack, twang, trill, ululate, vibrate, wail, warble, whack, wheeze, whiffle, whimper, whine, whir, whisper, whistle, yell, yelp, yodel, yowl
You might not recognize, due to the relatively sedate background noise of this short recording, just how many cars are in this busy parking lot. This segment was recorded at an outdoor mall in Daly City, just south of San Francisco, where I was struck by the sheer volume, color, clarity, and — foremost — personality of the many birds in a group of short trees at the end of various lanes of parking spaces. If you situated yourself properly, you could focus on the pinging back and forth of a conversation — a squabble, perhaps, or the start of a scheme, more likely — unfolding just out of view. Inherent in the humor of the moment was that the birds did a good job of disguising themselves, virtually indistinguishable as they were from the brush in which they were ensconced. At first, the beeping of a car backing up seemed to violate the purity of their intraspecies communication, but when listening back to the recording, I couldn’t help but note how the beeping seemed to fit naturally amid the bird calls. The birds seemed to, at times, match the tone of the beeping, and at other times leave space for the beeping, so they could talk, as it were, around it. Which is to say: the birds seemed just as cognizant of and, for better and worse, inured to the vehicular noise as are the rest of us.
Photo is a detail of a larger image by Richard F. Lyon (aka Dicklyon on Wikipedia), used thanks to a CC BY-SA 4.0 license.
There has been less discussion of the animated series Scavengers Reign on my social media feeds than there should be. In fact, there’s been close to none. The show is absolutely beautiful, riffing as it does on the comics work of Moebius, in particular, as well as that of Katsuhiro Otomo, Geof Darrow, and Ted McKeever, among others — and making good on those influences. It mixes off-world adventure with personal stories in a way that threads them together until they’re inseparable: trying to keep oneself alive on an alien planet turns out to be a great way to sort out what makes humans human. And the series has a fantastic score, one that balances narrative, sound design, and character point-of-view in equal parts.
The sound of Scavengers Reign is especially important because so much of the series is near-silent, just people (and machines, one in particular) against a landscape. And I mean truly “against” a landscape, as in pitted against. Scavengers Reign concerns itself considerably with the complex ecosystem of a planet on which human survivors of a spaceship mishap find themselves stranded. By the time we meet the characters, many have learned, no doubt the hard way, which local life forms are edible, which can serve a functional purpose (flashlight, salve, matchstick, luggage), and which are predatory or otherwise life-threatening.
The sequence in this video occurs when a botanist named Ursula witnesses a strange, brief cycle of life in a dense forest. The music begins as a droning bit of fantasy scene setting: as much the music of the moment as a depiction of the dreamy state in which Ursula finds herself. (The Shakespearean sense of forest transformation becomes more evident in a subsequent episode.) The initial whirring might as well be the sound of the plant gestating the odd little, short-lived character whom we encounter. By the time a vocal part arises, the audience is as fixated as Ursula is, and there is no disconnect between the operatic singing and the tiny life we watch play out its solitary purpose (an intricate act of pollination) in almost an instant. This is one such bit among countless on Scavengers Reign. About midway through the series there is a duet, sung between one of the humans and an increasingly sentient robot, that is quite special. It’s a great moment when a show this sonically astute makes music part of the story. Highly recommended.
I do this manually at the end of each week: collating (and sometimes lightly editing) most of the recent little comments I’ve made on social media, which I think of as my public scratch pad. I mostly hang out on Mastodon (at post.lurk.org/@disquiet), and I’m also trying out a few others. And I take weekends off social media.
▰ Received an album press release via email in Welsh; now waiting for my eyes and brain to reset
▰ There’s a moment in an episode of Bosch: Legacy when a real estate agent describes a house as having a “Spanish tinge” and Bosch doesn’t proceed to make a Jelly Roll Morton comment. This seemed especially out of character.
▰ Naturally, after my recent realization that I need to try to think less while practicing guitar, I returned to finger-picking
▰ I can be a tad self-conscious about words I’m concerned I use too often, so I was a little surprised to recognize that “accrual” hasn’t been in the title or the description of any of the 618 Disquiet Junto projects to date. That changed with the 619th project.
▰ Oh, cool — nice to be name-checked by Wired and Michael Calore regarding the return of the Buddha Machine.
▰ I don’t, myself, listen to Rob Lowe’s podcast, but a friend does, and apparently in the episode with Duran Duran’s John Taylor, Lowe talks about the lyrics to “St. Elmo’s Fire,” and Taylor brings up that there’s “another” song by that title, and that it has probably Robert Fripp’s best guitar solo. (Though I disagree. I think it’s probably “Hammond Song.”)
