In an indeterminate place

For the radio­heads among us I’d like to point out Short­Wave­Mu­sic, Myke Dodge Weiskopf’s paean to the ran­dom poetry and inter­mit­tent sta­tic of short wave radio. Weiskopf, who works as a radio pro­ducer, began the Short­Wave­Mu­sic blog in 2005, and it ran for some three years before loos­ing steam. After a brief hai­tus it was resus­ci­tated in Octo­ber 2009 and has been going strong ever since. In addi­tion to reg­u­lar post­ings, the site houses an archive of more than 60 atmos­pheric record­ings and related, thought­ful com­men­tary. You’ll also find some L.A. The­ater­works pro­duc­tions there (Myke’s day job), as well as assorted other treats, includ­ing mixes of some of Myke’s short wave captures.

The fol­low­ing sam­pler from Short­Wave­Mu­sic is intended to fire your imag­i­na­tion. If it catches your ear as well I rec­om­mend that you visit the site and work your way through the archive; you won’t be dis­ap­pointed. The truly smit­ten may also wish to down­load the cat­a­log of more than 100 record­ings that had appeared on the blog between 2005–’08, and will find instruc­tions on how to do so here. Now, on to the sounds…

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Dark Radio

“[This is] a short layer piece incor­po­rat­ing what sounds like three or four radio sources. I’m pretty sure this is just a brief record­ing of one of my all-night sleep installations.”

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SWM09.04: आकाशवाणी

“I would have remained a music-illiterate myself, had I not been in bed one mon­soon with asthma, and lis­tened to the radio to fill the hours. Around 2 a.m., I chanced upon some haunt­ing music being played on the Gen­eral Over­seas Ser­vice of All India Radio. While the rest of India slept I lis­tened, and was con­verted…” – Ramachan­dra Guha

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (ver­sion 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Down­load the lat­est ver­sion here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

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SWM09.00: Qrv Qrv Qrv de ShortWaveMusic

“Sta­tion: Uniden­ti­fied XMTR Test Sequence
Fre­quency: 11885 kHz
Trans­mit­ter: Unknown
Rec Date: Wed 09-Sep-2009 : 0406 UTC”

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SWM09.08: Mod­ern­iz­ing Khan Asparuh

“This piece is an exam­ple of ‘arranged folk­lore’ attrib­uted to the Upper Thra­cian region of South­ern Bul­garia, most likely per­formed by Donka Kol­eva, a Bulgarian-born and trained singer now liv­ing in New York.”

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Duelling XMTRs! #3

“…a col­li­sion of mod­ern East­ern elec­tron­ics and Qu’ranic recita­tion which sounds so nat­ural to our world-fusion-softened ears that it hardly reg­is­ters as an acci­dent of prop­a­ga­tion at all. You could prob­a­bly even dance to it …”

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KJES (“King Jesus Eter­nal Savior”)

“…in cer­tain fluke moments of pecu­liar prop­a­ga­tion and sig­nal chaos, KJES [“one of the weirder evan­gel­i­cal short­wave sta­tions”] occa­sion­ally crosses the line from lip-biting strange­ness to an inex­plic­a­ble burlap-dress beauty.”

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (ver­sion 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Down­load the lat­est ver­sion here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

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If you are as cap­ti­vated by the beauty of these dis­em­bod­ied sounds as I am, you might con­sider pur­chas­ing a copy of At the Tone, Weiskopf’s “ ‘Lit­tle His­tory’ of NIST Radio Sta­tions WWV and WWVH” (you’ll find a teaser for it here). Be sure to keep an ear out for his forth­com­ing His­tor­i­cal Long­wave CD Project, too. In the mean­while, you can enjoy his first “cat­a­log mix,” 833–45: Howth St PART/SEQ (Pananorama Mix), a sound col­lage incor­po­rat­ing “short­wave ele­ments, Qur’an recita­tion, and music,” which you can read about and down­load here.

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Tagged: interesting blog, short wave radio, sound collage

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