Signal Tapper (MP3)

Lifelike emanations amid the very low frequencies, by Dan Tapper

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

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The latest from the excellent Chicago-based broadcast/podcast Radius may be its most quiet yet. “Recording the Spirit Level” is **Dan Tapper**’s excursion into “very low frequency”” (VLF) signals. As the site explains:

>These signals are generated through electromagnetic fluctuations, or changes in magnetic signals produced naturally by the ionosphere, including lightning strikes and the Aurora Borealis. Collected using a homemade loop inductor, the raw magnetic sounds collide with interference produced by man-made technology to illustrate the relationship between humanity and the natural world.

The result is more akin to the soundscape of remote pond life than to an industrial grid, or perhaps more to the point a shallow pond near a single whirring electrical post. It’s all light glitching, amphibious burps, amid a low-level hum of nuanced communications effluvia.

http://soundcloud.com/radius-16/episode-37

The great things about listening to Radius, which is organized by Jeff Kolar, is the way each project provides a different aspect of the myriad ways that radio signals can provide the starting point, rather than merely a means to transmit, artistic practice.

Episode originally posted for free download at [theradius.us/episode37](http://theradius.us/episode37). More from Dan Tapper at [magneticsignals.tumblr.com](http://magneticsignals.tumblr.com/).

Music from Airport Anxiety (MP3)

A sonic travel advisory by Mikah Frank

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

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Anxiety can be self-evident or subliminal, and in either case the essential tension is underlying — not an explicit likelihood but an implicit one. **Micah Frank** knows something about the way that sonification can, so to speak, amplify the information intrinsic in data, having himself taken [data of an earthquake](https://disquiet.com/2011/03/14/the-sonifying-of-japan/) and turned its fierce metrics into noise. More recently, his “Granular Curtis Airport Security at JFK International Airport” appears to use narrow-band filtration, eking out tiny slivers of noise, as a means to investigate the mix of mundanity and tension that characterize the experience of submitting to the transit authority:

https://soundcloud.com/micahfrank/granular-curtis-airport

Track originally posted for free download at [soundcloud.com/micahfrank](https://soundcloud.com/micahfrank/granular-curtis-airport). More from Frank, who’s based in Brooklyn, New York, at [micahfrank.com](http://micahfrank.com/) and [twitter.com/micahfrank](https://twitter.com/micahfrank). (Image from [flickr.com](http://www.flickr.com/photos/davidreber/6059467915/).)

Everyday 8-bit (MP3)

Old-school charm from Alveola Ämting of Härnösand, Sweden

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

The 8-bit charm of “Kvinnodan” by **Alveola Ämting** benefits from the sounds out of which it is constructed registering as household objects as much as they do as old-school side-scrolling fun and games. It isn’t just the gee-whillikers buzz of arcade activity, but also alarm-clock beeps and desk-bell rings. There isn’t a lot in the manner of development as it proceeds along its five-minute course, except that the beeping gets a little glitchy at times, its internal structure becoming slowly apparent as the beep is granulated into a series of component parts.

Alveola is based in Härnösand, Sweden. Track originally posted for free download at [soundcloud.com/alveola](https://soundcloud.com/alveola/kvinnodan). Track found via a repost by [soundcloud.com/super-miracle-dream-team](https://soundcloud.com/super-miracle-dream-team).

A Sonic Tesseract (MP3)

Jo Burzynska plays a space back into itself

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

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Asked about a perceived “thickness” to the soundtrack of his film *Eraserhead*, the director David Lynch responded to his interviewer, Chris Rodley, as follows: “I’m real fascinated by presences — what you call ”˜room tone.’ It’s the sound that you hear when there’s silence, in between words or sentences. It’s a tricky thing, because in this seemingly kind of quiet sound, some feelings can be brought in, and a certain kind of picture of a bigger world can be made. And all those things are important to make that world.”

The New Zealand”“based sound artist **Jo Burzynska** explores the nature of room tone by taking the sounds inherent in the room and playing them back in the room, listening to how the space responds to its own space-ness, how an echo echoes. She recognizes the perceived silence as a misperception, and the result of her efforts is a kind of feedback loop, a sonic tesseract. Under the name **Stanier Black-Five**, she performed this investigation of space at Silo 6, a highly reverberant location, pictured above, in Auckland as part of the Audio Foundation’s Now! Here! Festival back in December of last year. The excellent Touch Radio series has now posted it online. “All the reverb is natural. No effects were used,” reads an accompanying note ([MP3](http://www.touchshop.org/touchradio/Radio91.mp3)). This is the sound of silence daring the listener to call it silence.

[audio:http://www.touchshop.org/touchradio/Radio91.mp3|titles=”Live at Silo 6 (December 2012)”|artists=Stanier Black-Five]

Track originally posted for free download at [touchradio.org.uk](http://www.touchradio.org.uk/touchradio_91_stanier_blackfive.html). The audio was recorded by David Hornblow, the live sound was overseen by Shaun Collins, and Malcolm Riddoch was responsible for the mastering. More from Burzynska at her [stanierblackfive.com](http://stanierblackfive.com/) website. Above photo by David Cowlard. The David Lynch quote is from the book *Lynch on Lynch*, published by Faber and Faber.

Oval, Back from South America

A free album of collaborations with various vocalists

/ By Marc Weidenbaum

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**Oval**, aka Berlin-based **Markus Popp**, took an extended working holiday through South America, and we got a 16-track compilation album of him performing with a variety of singers. And, better yet, the compilation, titled *Calidostópia!*, is free, thanks to funding from the Goethe Institute and the Cultural Foundation of the State of Bahia. The singers include **Agustín Albrieu** (Argentina), **Dandara Modesto** (Brazil), **Andrés Gualdrón** (Columbia), **Maité Gadea** (Uruguay), **Aiace Felix** (Brazil), **Hana Kobayashi** (Venezuela), and **Emilia Suto** (Brazil). There are 16 tracks in all, opening with “Featurette,” in which Albrieu sounds a bit like a subdued David Byrne atop a plectrum spectral fantasy committed by Oval. On “Oh!” the pizzicato instrumentation is met halfway by Sutro’s dadaist repertoire of restrained flourishes. Throughout we are reminded just how much the use of traditional band sounds — guitars, drums — has transformed our understanding of Popp’s music. What was once the glitch in the machine has since become a matter of surreal verisimilitude, a music whose challenges are belied by its surface familiarity. (For longtime Popp listeners, the effect of *Calidostópia!* is quite different from *So*, the album he created with vocalist Eriko Toyoda, and which retained the deeply digital sensibility of his earlier work.)

This streaming preview set includes brief segments of tracks from the album:

It’s available as both [MP3](http://www.mediafire.com/?uj7dj1azzs6jigw) and [FLAC](http://www.mediafire.com/?81431v2994qi9n3). The latter is 200 megabytes, but well worth the space entailed. More on/from Oval/Popp at [markuspopp.me](http://markuspopp.me/).