On Repeat: Killer Glitch Hum

Home/office playlist

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

I try to at least quickly note some of my favorite listening — things I’ll later regret having not written about in more depth, so better to share here briefly than not at all.

▰ To Die For: Pretty much all I’ve been listening to the past few days is the score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross for David Fincher’s new movie, The Killer. At the opening of the film, the title character talks about how he listens to music as a tool to concentrate. His repertoire of choice is the Smiths. Me? I listen to Reznor and Ross’ scores when I want to concentrate. 

https://trentreznor-atticusross.bandcamp.com/album/the-killer-original-score

▰ Signal Booster: Glitching, atmospheric, percolating — Tomotsugu Nakamura’s new album, Antenna, on the great Audiobulb label, is endlessly listenable. And for all its gentleness, it’ll keep you alert with unexpected fissures, textures, and switchbacks.

https://tomotsugu.bandcamp.com/album/antenna

▰ Hum Bucker: My friend Mahlen Morris recorded this excellent assemblage of “field recordings of humming sounds, from commercial refrigerators to restaurant bathroom fans to San Francisco’s cable car track, all looped and blended together.” (And he kinda named it for me, which is super nice.) 

On the Line: War & Poetry

Some favorite recent sentences

/ By Marc Weidenbaum 
“Screams are rare, but memorable,
mirrored in the faces of those
who do not make them."

That is from a poem, “The Keep,” by Christian Wiman in the November 13 issue of The New Yorker.

. . .

Writing is “the experience of watching what’s happening in the lines as the experience of the sounds and rhythms and the experience of emotions and knowledge that’s gained.”

That is the late poet David Ferry, who died this month at age 99, as quoted in his New York Times obituary.

. . .

"Huge clouds formed in the sky, followed by a strange darkness that rushed toward the horizon, chasing a sound wave so intense that it lasted for minutes, as the sonic boom bounced between the stratosphere and the ocean. The roar of the bomb was deafening. 'It was magnificent, like a hundred thunderstorms coming at us from all directions. It seemed that the heavens would burst. Our ears rang and ached for hours,' said one of the sailors who witnessed it from a battleship at sea.”

That is a description of a bomb being dropped, from Maniac, the new novel by Benjamín Labatut (whose When We Cease to Understand the World is a must-read about the intersection of physics and existentialism).

Sound Ledger: Alexa, Noise, More Noise

Audio culture by the numbers

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

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)

Sonic Verbs (Index)

Updated November 14, 2023, from the This Week in Sound email newsletter

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

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

Birds of Paradise

Well, in a parking lot

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

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.