HBM049: Sam's Japan Tapes
Here Be Monsters
Here Be Monsters Podcast
4.6 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 28 October 2015
⏱️ 23 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
When Sam Parker went to Japan to celebrate his mother's 60th birthday, he brought along a handheld audio recorder. For the next few weeks, he recorded every sound that he could find, attempting to capture as many audio snapshots of Japan as possible.
Sam doesn't really take pictures. Without his glasses he's legally blind twice over. So, to remember and share his trip, he created five beautiful audio postcards.
On this episode, Sam Parker and Jeff Emtman discuss the merits of deep listening and whether it's possible for a sound to be truly ugly. Sam also shares three of his audio postcards.
You can download all of Sam's postcards at observance.bandcamp.com (also embedded below).
Sam and Jeff met in college while working at KUGS-fm, a student operated station in Bellingham, Washington. Sam taught Jeff how to listen closely.
Music: Sam and Jeff made all the music on this episode using a guitar and a synthesizer, respectively.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | From the independent producer project of KCRW, this is Here Be Monsters. What's the most beautiful place you've ever been? |
| 0:13.0 | I would probably say meajima, the island of meajima in Japan. |
| 0:18.0 | I don't think I've ever been a place that was that serene. |
| 0:21.0 | The way things are built there and a lot of the shrines it's kind of sometimes |
| 0:26.3 | hard to see where exactly the boundary between some of the man-made structures and where |
| 0:32.2 | you know the woods begins it's just kind of |
| 0:39.0 | permeable you know you'll be around the corner and you just see wild deer |
| 0:45.8 | sterling down the street it's that kind of place. |
| 0:58.0 | Is that the place that you reference as the most beautiful place in the liner notes of one of your recordings? Yeah, that's it. I feel like in every single one of the recordings from Mujah, there there is the sense of stillness and it didn't really take any effort on my part for that to happen. |
| 1:09.1 | It's just kind of the way it is there. Would you have just a couple minutes to make some beautiful sounds come out of the |
| 1:28.9 | omna cord or your bass or something else? Yeah, I think I could probably do that. |
| 1:34.0 | Yeah. |
| 1:35.0 | What do you think we should do is? |
| 1:36.0 | That's a good question. |
| 1:40.0 | What? |
| 1:41.0 | I've got my little keyboard too if we need it. |
| 1:44.0 | Hmm. |
| 1:46.0 | Let me see. Mm-mm-mm. M. Here be monsters, the podcast about something warped, something new, the podcast about |
| 2:30.0 | the unknown. All right. |
| 2:46.0 | All right. |
| 2:47.0 | Can you introduce yourself? |
| 2:48.0 | My name is Sam Parker and I like sound. |
... |
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