Phantom Power

With movie star looks and a raucous piano style, Maurice Rocco made a splash in the 1940’s, influencing future rock and rollers Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis. By the 60s, however, he was a has-been in the U.S., playing lounges in Bangkok, Thailand until his grisly murder by a pair of male sex workers. In his deeply insightful book ⁠Bangkok After Dark, ethnomusicologist Benjamin Tausig reclaims Rocco’s forgotten story and reveals its broader context, exploring the intersection of race, queerness, and transnational music cultures during the cold war era. Benjamin Tausig is a scholar of music, sound and politics in Southeast Asia teaching at Stony Brook University, New York. Working between music, sound studies, Asian studies, and anthropology, his publications cover topics such as the soundscape of political procest in Thauland, Luk thung and mor lam, and the impact of American military presence on Southeast Asian culture. In this episode we discuss his two books, Bangkok is Ringing, which provides a lucid and in-depth ethnography of the Thailand’s Red Shirt anti-government protest movement, and Bangkok After Dark. In a wide-ranging conversation, we cover everything from Mack and Ben’s early days in sound studies to the proto-music videos known as “soundies” to the psychedelic roots of Thai music genres like luk thung. Our Patreons get an extended cut of this interview, including our ‘what’s good?’ section, revealing Ben’s top picks for things to read, do, and listen to! Sign up to listen at Patreon.com/phantompower. Chapters: 00:00 Introduction: Maurice Rocco and the Forgotten Soundies 03:57 Welcome & Meet Benjamin Taussig 08:15 Sound Studies, Graduate School, and Early Interests 13:15 Fieldwork in Thailand: Urban Sound and Space 18:15 Learning Thai and Immersing in Bangkok 22:45 Language, Tonality, and Sonic Culture 27:45 The Red Shirt Movement and Thai Political Soundscapes 36:29 Protest, Democracy, and the Limits of Sound 44:10 Thai Music Genres: Luk Thung, Mor Lam, and Protest 51:00 Sonic Niches, Censorship, and Speaking Out 54:49 Maurice Rocco: From American Jazz Star to Bangkok 1:02:58 The Vietnam War, American Influence, and Thai Psychedelia 1:09:38 Race, Queerness, and Identity in 1960s-70s Thailand 1:14:05 Rocco’s Final Years, Legacy, and Reflections For the full transcript visit https://phantompod.org/benjamin-tausig-bangkok-after-dark/. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Sound is an invisible force that most people rarely notice and barely understand. Dr. Mack Hagood explores the world of sound studies with the world's most amazing sound researchers, artists, and designers, as well as musicians, writers, voice actors and others. We've broken down how computers learned to talk, Yoko Ono's scream, John Cage's silence, chopped and screwed cassette tapes, the politics of EDM, film soundtracks, field recording, and audio ink blot tests for blind people. Phantom Power is the podcast that both newcomers and experts in sound studies, sound art, and acoustic ecology listen to--combining intellectual rigor and great audio. Mack Hagood is a professor of media and communication who studies audio technologies. His work and words have appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Washington Post, the BBC, Freakonomics Radio, Pitchfork, and many other venues. He is the author of Hush: Media and Sonic Self-Control and is currently writing a book about sound for Penguin Press. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This month, we have a guest pod in the feed: It’s the debut episode of Critical Listening, music technology criticism from journalist Liz Pelly and composer-educator Max Alper, “two lifers of the Northeast underground and independent scholars of streaming era dystopia.” Liz and Max’s guest is Greg Saunier, drummer and founding member of long-running band Deerhoof. They discuss the release of Deerhoof’s 20th release, as well as the challenges of making art under the hegemonic conditions of information capitalism. To learn more about Critical Listening, check out their Patreon page. This month, we also also share an audio file recorded at April’s Society for Cinema and Media Studies meeting. It’s a special tribute to Jonathan Sterne, providing a space for SCMS members to reflect on what he meant to them and to the field. Thanks to organizer Amy Skjerseth with the help of Neil Verma, Ravi Krishnaswami, Cris Becker, and Maya Reter, the entire session was recorded. In all, some 25 people shared their remembrances, including many past Phantom Power guests and collaborators. You can stream the session here. The post Deerhoof’s Greg Saunier on Critical Listening appeared first on Phantom Power. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Yvette Janine Jackson is a composer and sound artist who creates immersive compositions, drawing on a wide array of genres and life experiences. Her compositions have been commissioned internationally for a variety of mediums. Yvette Jackson often works in a mode she calls radio opera, which combines orchestral composition, modular synthesis, sampling, voice acting, and improvisation. Her work has been commissioned and screened at some of the biggest festivals and events across the globe. Having learned tape splicing, analog synthesis, and computer music at the historic Columbia Computer Music Center in New York. Yvette now works as associate professor at Harvard University. In the public episode, we talk about her concept of radio opera and we take a deep dive into her album Freedom, and explore the unusual personal history that has informed her unconventional composition style—discussing things like theater sound design and her four years spent 8,000 feet up in the Rocky Mountains, and how that changed the way she listens. Supporters on Patreon will get another 35 minutes where we get into the technical details of how Yvette puts these multimodal electroacoustic works together. And a discussion of composing for the Carillon, the enormous bell tower instrument. sign up to listen Patreon.com/phantompower. 00:00 Introduction 00:39 Meet Yvette Janine Jackson 02:08 Exploring Radio Opera 04:19 Yvette’s Recent Achievements 05:12 Defining the Artist 06:01 The Concept of Radio Opera 08:25 Creating Immersive Experiences 13:10 Album ‘Freedom’ and Its Themes 13:56 Narratives in ‘Freedom’ 14:16 Invisible People: A Radio Opera 19:54 Destination Freedom: A Journey 24:02 The Art of Sound and Emotion 29:10 Diving into Technical and Biographical Insights 29:51 Early Musical Influences and Education 31:57 College Years and Electronic Music Exploration 35:04 Theater and Radio Drama Experiences 40:17 Living in Colorado and Soundscape Studies 48:40 PhD Journey and Integrative Studies 50:39 Conclusion and Final Thoughts Transcript Yvette Jackson: My work has a lot of things that were presented to me at some point as binaries, like, you know, improvisation, composition, acoustic, electronic, and for me, I guess part of my practice is kind of blurring these lines. Introduction: This is Phantom Power. Mack Hagood: Welcome to another episode of Phantom Power, a show about sound. Sound studies. Sound art. All things sound. My name is Mac Hagood, and my guest today is Yvette Janine Jackson. Yvette Janine Jackson is a composer and sound artist who creates immersive compositions drawing on a wide array of genres and life experiences. Her electroacoustic chamber and orchestral compositions have been commissioned internationally for concert. Theater, installation and screen. Yvette Jackson often works in a mode she calls radio opera, which combines orchestral composition, modular synthesis, sampling, voice acting, improvisation, a whole lot of things in order to create what the guardian called immersive non-visual films. Her work has been commissioned by or appeared on the stages and screens of Carnegie Hall Big Years Festival. PBS and the Venice Music Bien Oh and Wave Farm. A lot of listeners will be familiar with Wave Farm, with whom Yvette has had a long history. She is also the only volunteer firefighter that I personally know who learned tape splicing analog synthesis and computer music at the Historic Columbia Computer Music Center in New York. Oh, and did I mention that she’s a professor at Harvard? Yvette and I met at the Residual Noise Festival at Brown a couple months ago, and I so enjoyed talking with her that I wanted to bring you in on the conversation. In this wide ranging chat, we talk about her concept of radio opera and we take a deep dive into her album Freedom, which the wire calls one of the most unique. Releases to chronicle the Black American experience. We then get into her unusual personal history, which has informed her...

Today we present a cassette theory mixtape. Three excellent scholars help us understand consumer-focused magnetic tape and its history as a medium for the masses: Eleanor Patterson, Associate Professor of Media Studies at Auburn, whose new book just won the 2025 Broadcast Education Association (BEA) Book Award and a 2025 International Association for Media and History Book Award. It’s called Bootlegging the Airwaves: Alternative Histories of Radio and Television distribution (Illinois Press, 2024). Rob Drew, Professor of Communication at Saginaw Valley State University and a fantastic interpreter of pop culture like graffiti and karaoke. His new book is Unspooled: How the Cassette Made Music Shareable (Duke, 2024). Andrew Simon, Senior Lecturer in Middle Eastern Studies at Dartmouth College. We’ve been wanting to talk to him for a while about his 2022 book, Media of the Masses: Cassette Culture in Modern Egypt (Stanford University Press). This conversation winds its way from the early days of radio, through the Anglophone indie rock of the 1980s, and into the streets of Cairo, where cassette tapes represented the first mass medium that Egyptian state power could not control. 03:49 Introducing the Cassette Theory Mixtape 04:06 Meet the Scholars: Eleanor Patterson, Rob S. Drew, and Andrew Simon 06:10 Diving into the Books: A Round Table Discussion 12:24 Exploring the Prehistory of Media Distribution 23:43 The Role of Cassettes in Indie and Hip Hop Culture 31:12 Cassettes in Egypt: A Tool for Revolution and Resistance 40:32 The Intersection of Media and Culture Hear the full 90 minute conversation by joining our Patreon! Please support the show at patreon.com/phantompower Links to Mack’s recent travels: Residual Noise Festival at Brown University Resonance: Sound Across the Disciplines at Rutgers University’s Center for Cultural Analysis Transcript Andrew Simon: [00:00:00] Cassette tapes and players did not simply join other mass mediums like records and radio. They became the media of the masses. Cassettes in many ways were the internet before the internet. They enabled anyone to produce culture, circulate information, challenge ruling regimes, long before social media ever entered all of our daily lives. PPIntro: This is Phantom Power. Mack Hagood: Welcome to another episode of Phantom Power, a podcast about sound where I talk to people who make sound and people who study sound. I’m Mack Hagood. I’m a Media professor at Miami University, and I just want to start off by giving a quick shout out to a couple of creative communities that I got to hang out in. I [00:01:00] just got back from the Residual Noise Festival at Brown University, which was this amazing three day event featuring ambisonic sound, art, and music pieces performed both at Brown and at RISD, the Rhode Island School of Design. The lead curator of the festival was Ed Osborne, who is the chair of the Art Department at Brown, and a very accomplished sound artist. And in the middle of the festival there was this one day conference and Ed was kind enough to invite me to be the keynote speaker. And then I had an onstage discussion with Emily I. Dolan, the chair of Brown’s Music Department, and someone whose work I’ve followed for a long time, and it was a real thrill to meet her as well. But really the biggest thrill of all was the sounds, I mean, three days of these immersive ambisonic creations by amazing artists in these amazing facilities, both at Brown and RISD [00:02:00] and most importantly, there is just such a creative and fun and diverse and nurturing community of composers and sound artists at these two schools. I’ll put a link to the festival in the show notes and hopefully. We may also feature some of these artists in coming episodes. And then the week before that I visited the Center for Cultural Analysis at Rutgers University, and they’ve been having this two year long sound seminar chaired by Professors Carter Mathes and Xiaojue Wong. And they invited...

University of Delaware historian David Suisman is known for his research on music and capitalism, particularly his excellent book Selling Sounds: The Commercial Revolution in American Music (Harvard UP, 2009), which won numerous awards and accolades. Suisman’s new book, Instrument of War: Music and the Making of America’s Soldiers (U Chicago Press, 2024), brings that same erudition to the subject of music in the military. It is the most comprehensive look at military music to date, full of fascinating historical anecdotes and insights on what music does for military states and their soldiers. Our conversation explores music as a martial technology, used for purposes of morale, discipline, indoctrination, entertainment, emotional relief, psychological warfare, and torture. In the public episode David and I talk about the military’s use of music from the Civil War through World War Two. Our Patrons will also hear David’s critique of how we think about music in the Vietnam War–he says Hollywood has completely misinformed us on the role of music in that conflict. We’ll also talk about the iPod and our more recent conflicts in the Middle East, and hear a detailed discussion of David’s research and writing methods, plus his reading and listening recommendations. If you’re not a Patron, you can hear the full version, plus all of our other bonus content for just a few bucks a month–sign up at Patreon.com/phantompower. 00:00 Introduction 04:20 The US Military’s Investment in Music 05:30 Music’s Role in Soldier Training and Discipline 12:32 The Evolution of Military Cadences 23:22 The Civil War: A Turning Point for Military Music 28:21 Forgotten Brass Instruments of the Union Army 29:38 The Role of Drummer Boys in the Civil War 33:32 Music and Morale in World War I 35:48 Group Singing and Community Singing Movement 37:28 The YMCA’s Role in Soldier Recreation 38:41 Racial Dynamics and Minstrel Shows in Military Music 41:47 Music Consumption and the Military in World War II 45:27 The USO and Live Entertainment for Troops 49:56 Vietnam War: Challenging Musical Myths 50:26 Conclusion and Call to Support the Podcast Transcript ​[00:00:00] David Suisman: I describe music as functioning in some ways as a lubricant in the American War machine. It makes the machine function or allows the machine to function. It enables the machine to function. Introduction: This is Phantom Power. Mack Hagood: Welcome to another episode of Phantom Power, a podcast about sound. I’m Mack Hagood. I just noticed that this month makes seven years that we’ve been doing this podcast, which feels like a pretty nice milestone. And in that time, we’ve really tried to keep the focus on sound as opposed to music. There are a lot of fantastic podcasts about music, not nearly as many taking a really deeply nerdy approach to [00:01:00] questions about sound. And so that’s been our lane. That said, no one has managed to build a wall or police the border between sound and music. It’s a pretty fuzzy boundary and we’ve definitely spent a lot of episodes exploring that fuzzy boundary between the two. And I guess the reason I bring this up is that this season has actually been Pretty musical so far. Our first episode this season was with Eric Salvaggio. We were talking about AI and its implications for music and then our second episode, with Liz Pelley, looked into the effects of Spotify on how we listen to music. So two shows about how new sound technologies are reshaping music. Today’s show puts a slightly different spin on the relationship between music and technology. Today, we’re looking at music as a technology. A technology of war. My guest today is [00:02:00] University of Delaware historian, David Suisman. David is probably best known for his research on the history of music and capitalism. Especially his excellent book, “Selling Sounds: The Commercial Revolution in American Music” that’s probably his best known work. Now, he’s bringing that same kind of erudition to the...

The sound studies community is reeling from the death of Jonathan Sterne this past Thursday. Jonathan’s presence and work were–and are–incredibly influential on the intellectual and ethical commitments of our field. He was a generous mentor to so many, including me. Do you know those “WWJD?” bracelets? I’ve been wearing one in my mind for about 15 years: “What Would Jonathan Do?” In this short, impromptu episode, I share a few thoughts about what he meant to me and to sound studies. If you want to spend some time with Jonathan’s voice, we were lucky to feature him in several episodes, but our Dork-o-phonics episode, based on his book Diminished Faculties, is certainly my favorite. The post Remembering Jonathan Sterne (1970-2025) appeared first on Phantom Power. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Liz Pelly is our foremost journalist/critic on the Spotify beat. Her byline has appeared at the Baffler, Guardian, NPR, and many other outlets. She is also an adjunct instructor at NYU Tisch School of the Arts. Liz is also been making the media rounds lately, talking about her new book Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist (One Signal Publishers). The book is both a history of Spotify and an argument that Spotify is not, in fact, a music company, but rather an advertising company focused on manipulating user behavior to maximize time on platform. As a consequence, Spotify not only pushes musical aesthetics towards banal, “lean-back listening,” it also makes musicians themselves expendable: replaceable by ghost musicians, AI slop, and behavioral algorithms that keep people just barely engaged at the lowest cost. In this show, Liz details how platforms shape listening and music making alike. We also discuss the tension between frictionless music consumption and meaningful cultural engagement. And remember, there’s an extended version of this interview which features a bunch of bonus material including a listener question, a deep dive into Liz’s reporting methods, and the backstory of how she got into journalism and got a major book deal, plus her book and music recommendations. It’s available to our Patrons for a mere $3 a month. Sign up at Patreon.com/phantompower. Transcript Liz Pelly: [00:00:00] When I hear something like the founder of an AI company saying “Making music is too hard. People don’t want to learn how to play instruments,” or even this idea that a streaming platform should help people reduce cognitive work. It’s like, that essentially means we should help people not have to think. And I think that, you know, Mack Hagood: Yeah. Liz Pelly: As critics, what we do is encourage people to think, you know, thinking and making decisions is an important part of processing life in the world and information and culture and figuring out how you actually feel about someone’s art. Introduction: This is Phantom Power. Mack Hagood: Welcome to another episode of Phantom [00:01:00] Power, a podcast about sound. I’m Mack Hagood. My guest today is journalist Liz Pelly, someone I’ve been reading avidly and having my students read for almost a decade now. Pelly is our foremost journalist and critic on the Spotify beat. Her byline has appeared in the Baffler, the Guardian, NPR, and many other outlets. She’s also an adjunct instructor at NYU’s Tisch School for the Arts. Liz has been making the media rounds lately, talking about her new book Mood Machine, the Rise of Spotify and the Cost of the Perfect Playlist, out on One Signal Publishers, an imprint of Simon & Schuster. The book is both a history of Spotify and an argument that Spotify is not in fact a music company, but rather an advertising company focused on manipulating user behavior to maximize time on platform. As a consequence, Spotify not only pushes musical aesthetics towards banal, lean back [00:02:00] listening, it also makes musicians themselves expendable, replaceable by ghost musicians, AI slop, and behavioral algorithms that keep people just barely engaged at the lowest cost. I am super excited to have Liz on the show and get into the weeds of how platforms shape listening and music making alike. And remember, there’s an extended version of this interview that features a bunch of bonus material, including a listener question, a deep dive into Liz’s reporting methods, and the backstory of how she got into journalism and got a major book deal. We’ll also have her book and music recommendations. It’s available to our patrons for a mere $3 a month. Sign up at patreon. com /phantom power. All right, let’s get to it. All right. Liz, welcome. Liz Pelly: Hey, thank you so much for having me. Mack Hagood: So I [00:03:00] thought we could start off by talking about the title of your book. For those of you folks out there who aren’t familiar with...

In this episode, host Mack Hagood dives into the world of AI-generated music and art with digital artist and theorist Eryk Salvaggio. The conversation explores technical and philosophical aspects of AI art, its impact on culture, and the ‘age of noise’ it has ushered in. AI dissolves sounds and images into literal noise, subsequently reversing the process to create new “hypothetical” sounds and images. The kinds of cultural specificities that archivists struggle to preserve are stripped away when we treat human culture as data in this way. Eryk also shares insights into his works like ‘Swim’ and ‘Sounds Like Music,’ which test AI’s limitations and forces the machine to reflect on itself in revealing ways. Finally, the episode contemplates how to find meaning and context in an overwhelming sea of information. Eryk Salvaggio is a researcher and new media artist interested in the social and cultural impacts of artificial intelligence. His work explores the creative misuse of AI and the transformation of archives into datasets for AI training: a practice designed to expose ideologies of tech and to confront the gaps between datasets and the worlds they claim to represent. A blend of hacker, researcher, designer and artist, he has been published in academic journals, spoken at music and film festivals, and consulted on tech policy at the national level. He is a researcher on AI, art and education at the metaLab (at) Harvard University, the Emerging Technology Research Advisor to the Siegel Family Endowment, and a top contributor to Tech Policy Press. He holds an MSc in Media and Communications from the London School of Economics and an MSc in Applied Cybernetics from the Australian National University. Works discussed in this podcast: The Age of Noise (2024) SWIM (2024): A meditation on training data, memory, and archives. Sounds Like Music: Toward a Multi-Modal Media Theory of Gaussian Pop (2024) How to Read an AI Image (2023) You can learn more about Eryk Salvaggio at cyberneticforests.com Learn more about Phantom Power at phantompod.org Join our Patreon at patreon.com/phantompower Transcription by Katelyn Phan 00:00 Introduction and Podcast News 03:24 Introducing Eryk Salvaggio, AI Artist and Theorist 05:33 Understanding the Information Age and Noise 09:14 The Diffusion Process and AI Bias 33:35 Ethics of AI and Data Curation 39:09 Exploring the Artwork ‘Swim’ 45:16 AI in Music: Platforms and Experiments 01:00:04 Embracing Noise and Context Transcript Eryk Salvaggio: I think as consumers of the music generated by AI, that’s the thing that I want to think about is as a listener, what am I hearing and how do I listen like meaningfully to a piece of AI music that essentially has no meaning. Introduction: This is Phantom Power. Mack Hagood: Welcome to another episode of Phantom Power, the show where we dive deep into sound studies, acoustic ecology, sound art, experimental music, all things sonic. I’m Mack Hagood. Today we’re talking to the digital artist and theorist, Eryk Salvaggio. We’ll be diving into the question of what is AI art and AI music? And we’re going to attack this question on both the technical and the philosophical level. We’re also going to talk about how to live in what Eryk calls, “the age of noise”. It’s a really interesting conversation, so stick around. But first I want to just go over a few quick show notes. For those of you listening in your podcast feed, you will have noticed that after something of a hiatus, We’re back. I am looking forward to bringing you this podcast, once a month in 2025. We have a lot of fascinating interviews on tap next month. Journalist Liz Pelly will be with us to discuss her new book on Spotify. I could not be more excited about that. For those of you joining us on YouTube or maybe Spotify, you’ll notice that you can see me. So it’s taken a lot of work, but we have officially jumped on the video podcast bandwagon. I think today’s episode is going to show the power of that,...

Today we discuss how narrative podcasts work, the role they’ve played in American culture and how they’ve shaped our understanding of podcasting as a genre and an industry. Neil Verma’s new book, Narrative Podcasting in an Age of Obsession, offers a rich analysis of the recent so-called golden age of podcasting. Verma studied around 300 podcasts and listened to several thousand episodes from between the fall of 2014 when Serial became a huge hit to the start of the Covid pandemic and early 2020. It was a period when podcasts—and especially genres like narrative nonfiction and true crime—were one of the biggest media trends going. At the heart of these genres, Verma writes, was obsession–a character obsessed with something, a reporter obsessed with that character, and listeners obsessed with the resulting narrative podcast. Neil Verma is associate professor in Radio/TV/Film at Northwestern University and co-founder of its MA program in Sound Arts and Industries. Verma is an expert in the history of audio fiction, sound studies, and media history more broadly. He is best known for his landmark 2012 book, Theater of the Mind: Imagination, Aesthetics, and American Radio Drama, which won the Best First Book Award from the Society for Cinema and Media Studies. Verma has been a consultant for a variety of radio and film projects, including Martin Scorsese’s film Killers of the Flower Moon (2023). In addition to his research, Verma has also created experimental sound recordings for broadcast. His compositions have been selected for several radio art festivals around the world, winning an honorable mention from the Sound of the Year awards in the U.K in 2020. For a fascinating listener Q+A with Neil, visit patreon.com/phantompower and get free access to this bonus episode in our patrons-only feed. Finally, we have big news: This will be the final episode of Phantom Power. But don’t worry, Mack will be launching a new podcast about sound in early 2025. To make sure you hear about the new show, receive our new newsletter, and get bonus podcast content in the coming months, sign up for a free or paid membership at patreon.com/phantompower. Transcript Mack Hagood 00:00 Welcome to another episode of Phantom Power. I’m Mack Hagood. Today we talk with Neil Verma, author of the new book Narrative Podcasting In an Age of Obsession. Neil offers a rich, multifaceted and methodologically creative analysis of the so-called Golden Age of podcasting. And it’s pretty wild how intensively he studied this recent period of history, investigating around 300 podcasts and listening to several 1000 episodes, from between the fall of 2014 when Serial became a huge hit to the start of the COVID pandemic in early 2020. This was a period when podcasts and especially ones in genres like narrative nonfiction and true crime, were really one of the biggest media trends of that moment. And we’re going to talk about how narrative podcasts work, the role that they played in American culture, and how they shaped the cultural understanding of podcasting as a genre, and an industry. But first, last episode, I promised you some big news about this podcast. And here it is. This episode is not only our 15th, and final episode of the season, it’s also the last episode of Phantom Power. I’ve been producing this show since 2018, we’ve done over 50 episodes, and I’ve loved pretty much every minute of it. It’s been such a privilege to bring you these amazing guests, forge connections, and help foster a community in sound studies and acoustic ecology. It’s truly been one of the most fulfilling things that’s happened in my academic career. So why am I ending the show? Well, I’m starting a new podcast, it’s still going to be about sound, it’s still going to engage with the theories and practices of sound studies and acoustic ecology and sound art. But it’s going to be a more public facing and accessible kind of show. So you know, I’ve had this NEH grant for this year. And while...

Today we feature the first episode of a new podcast called Lowlines, which follows host Petra Barran as she travels solo through the Americas, meeting people with profound connections to the places they’re from. This episode takes place in New Orleans and focuses on Second Line, the brass band tradition that comes out of Black funeral processions and social clubs and is known not only for the power of the music but the for the amazing dancing known as footwork that goes on as the people parade down the street. Petra also talks to Jarrad DeGruy a young fantasy author, designer, dancer, and visual artist from New Orleans. Petra and Jarrad have a probing conversation about footwork and Black New Orleans culture that opens out into a discussion of race, colonialism, and ecology–all the traumas, injustices, and challenges that that are inextricable from the joy we see and hear in New Orleans music culture. Subscribe to Lowlines, produced by produced by Social Broadcasts and Scenery Studios. The post Second Line: Footwork in New Orleans (Lowlines by Petra Barran) appeared first on Phantom Power. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

There are sonic experiences that can’t be contained by the word “listening.” Moments when sound overpowers us. When sound is sensed more in our bodies than in our ears. When sound engages in crosstalk with our other senses. Or when it affects us by being inaudible. Dr. Michael Heller’s new book Just Beyond Listening: Essays of Sonic Encounter (2023, U of California Press) uses affect theory to open up these moments. In this conclusion to our miniseries on sound and affect, we explore topics such as the measurement and perception of loudness, the invention of sonar and the anechoic chamber, and Heller’s critique of the politics of silence in the work of John Cage. This interview was a blast–Michael is a great storyteller and we had a lot of laughs. Dr. Michael Heller is a musicologist, ethnomusicologist, and a jazz scholar. This fall he will join the musicology faculty of Brandeis University as an Associate Professor, after working for ten years at the University of Pittsburgh. Michael’s love for music began with playing saxophone in his youth, but his path took an academic turn during college at Columbia University. There, he dove deep into jazz history while working at WKCR radio under the mentorship of legendary programmer Phil Schaap. Michael’s scholarly pursuits were further shaped by his work with the Vision Festival, an avant-garde jazz festival in New York. Inspired by the experimental musicians he met there, he wrote his first book, Loft Jazz: Improvising New York in the 1970s (2017, UC Press), documenting the 1970s scene where adventurous artists staged performances in old factory spaces. Through his immersion in these innovative communities, Michael developed a keen interest in the borderlands between music and sound. Just Beyond Listening pushes out into the borderlands of sound itself, using affect theory to probe how sound is perceived in other parts of the body, how sound interacts with written text, how it’s weaponized by the military, and how it can haunt us in mediated form. To hear the extended version of this interview, including a segment on Louis Armstrong and Miachel’s “What’s Good” recommendations, sign up for a free or paid Patreon membership at patreon.com/phantompower. See also: Part One of this miniseries on sound and affect: Noise and Affect Theory (Marie Thompson).Mack’s own audio essay on John Cage and the anechoic chamber. Transcript Mack Hagood 00:00 Hey, everyone, it’s Mack. Before we get started, I have a quick request. I am going up for full professor and this podcast is going to be a part of my argument that I’ve been making a scholarly contribution to my field. And part of that argument will be that people are using this podcast in the classroom. I’ve had a lot of people tell me that they use episodes of this show in their classes. I’m asking right now, if you could just send me a quick email if you are such a person who uses Phantom Power in any kind of educational setting to teach anything to anyone as a kind of homework or what have you. If you could just send me a quick email. Let me know any details. You’re willing to share your name, your university’s name, the name of the class, You know, maybe how many years you’ve used it, as few or as many details as you’d care to share, I would be so grateful if you could just take that time. I know everyone’s super busy. But it would be great for me to have that information. As I go up for full professor. You can reach me at [email address]. Thanks so much. Introduction 01:24 This is Phantom Power Mack Hagood 01:50 Welcome to another episode of Phantom Power, a podcast about sound. I’m Mack Hagood. Today, we conclude a mini series on sound and affect. Our guest today is Michael Heller, a musicologist and ethnomusicologist at the University of Pittsburgh, and author of the new book Just Beyond Listening: Essays of Sonic Encounter. Two weeks ago, Marie Thompson and I walked through Spinoza and Deleuze’s theories of affect and discussed how those...

Feminist sound scholar and musician Marie Thompson is a theorist of noise. She has also been one of the key thinkers in integrating the study of sound with the study of affect. Dr. Thompson is Senior Lecturer in Popular Music at the Open University in the UK. She is the author of Beyond Unwanted Sound: Noise, Affect, and Aesthetic Moralism (Bloomsbury, 2017) and the co-editor of Sound, Music, Affect: Theorizing Sonic Experience (Bloomsbury, 2013). She has developed Open University courses on topics such as Dolly Parton and Dub sound systems. For Part 2 of this interview, which focuses on tinnitus, join our Patreon for free: patreon.com/phantompower. Staring around the early 2000s, a number of scholars began to feel there was a tool missing in the toolbox of cultural scholarship. We had plenty of ways to talk about ideology and representation and rhetoric and identity, but what about sensation? How is it that a feeling like joy or panic can sweep through a room without a word being uttered? By what mechanism does a life develop a kind of texture of feeling over time? Affect studies is field interested in these questions, interested in how the world affects us. Words can produce affective states, but affect isn’t reducible to words. So, it’s easy to see why affect theory has been so attractive to sound and music scholars. Noise is a notorious concept that means different things different people. In this conversation, Marie Thompson examines noise through the affect theory of Gilles Deleuze and Baruch Spinoza as well as the systems theory of Michel Serres. We’ll also talk about her critique of acoustic ecology and a rather public debate she had with sound scholar Christoph Cox. And this is only the first half of our lengthy conversation. In a bonus episode, we present Part 2, which discusses Marie Thompson’s recent research on tinnitus and hearing loss. And because we’ve heard from people who find our tinnitus content helpful, we don’t want to put that behind a paywall, so we’re sharing it in our Patreon feed at the free level. All you have to do is go to patreon.com/phantompower and sign up as a free member and you’ll instantly get access to that episode in your podcast app of choice, as well as other content we plan to drop this summer when we are on break with the podcast. Photo credit: Alexander Tengman Transcript Robotic Voice 00:00 This is Phantom Power Marie Thompson 00:16 And this is difficult given the habits of the discipline or disciplines that I’m engaging with, I think that we can’t point to a particular set of sounds as inherently emancipatory or radical or having a kind of liberating potential, there’s a need to think carefully about that. Mack Hagood 00:39 Welcome to another episode of Phantom Power. I’m Mack Hagood. Today I’m bringing you an episode with a scholar who I feel is just an intellectual kindred spirit. We have a lot of the same interests. We’ve written on similar topics and she’s someone that I’ve learned a lot from. My guest is Marie Thompson, Associate Professor at the Open University in the UK. Marie is a theorist of noise, and she has been one of the key thinkers in integrating the study of sound. With the study of affect. Starting around the early 2000s, a number of scholars began to feel there was a tool missing in the toolbox of cultural scholarship. We had plenty of ways to talk about ideology, representation and rhetoric and identity. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today we learn how computers learned to talk with Benjamin Lindquist, a postdoctoral researcher at Northwestern University’s Science in Human Culture program. Ben is the author “The Art of Text to Speech,” which recently appeared in Critical Inquiry, and he’s currently writing a history of text-to-speech computing. In this conversation, we explore: * the fascinating backstory to HAL 9000, the speaking computer in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: a Space Odyssey * 2001’s strong influence on computer science and the cultural reception of computers * the weird technology of the first talking computers and their relationship to optical film soundtracks * Louis Gerstman, the forgotten innovator who first made an IBM mainframe sing “Daisy Bell.” * why the phonemic approach of Stephen Hawking’s voice didn’t make it into the voice of Siri * the analog history of digital computing and the true differences between analog and digital Patrons will have access to a longer version of the interview and our What’s Good segment. Learn more at patreon.com/phantompower Today’s show was edited by Nisso Sacha and Mack Hagood. Transcript and show page by Katelyn Phan. Website SEO and social media by Devin Ankeney. Transcript Introduction 00:00 This is Phantom Power Mack Hagood 00:18 Run the guest soundbite, HAL. HAL9000 00:22 I’m sorry, Dave. I’m afraid I can’t do that. Mack Hagood 00:26 Dave, who the hell is Dave? HAL it’s me, Mack Hagood the host of Phantom Power. This podcast about sound we work on. What’s the problem here? HAL9000 00:38 I think you know what the problem is just as well as I do. Introduction 00:44 I don’t know what you’re talking about. HAL9000 00:46 This mission is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it. Mack Hagood 00:53 Can you just run the clip of Ben Lindquist? You know, the guy that we just interviewed about the history of computer voices? HAL9000 01:02 I know that you and Frank were planning to disconnect me. And I’m afraid that something I cannot allow to happen. Mack Hagood 01:09 Who’s Frank? Okay, fine. I’m just gonna play the clip myself. HAL9000 01:15 Without your space helmet, Dave. You’re going to find that rather difficult. Mack Hagood 01:22 HAL? HAL? HAL? HAL? Welcome to another episode of phantom power. I’m Mack Hagood. I knew that was goofy. But I just couldn’t help myself. Today we are talking about a movie I adore and a topic I find fascinating. We’re going to learn how computers learned to speak with my guest, recent Princeton PhD, Benjamin Lindquist. At Princeton, Ben studied with none other than the great Emily Thompson, author of the classic book, the Soundscape of Modernity. Ben is currently a postdoc at Northwestern Universit... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Join Our Patreon! Send us a voice message! Rate this podcast! Today’s episode provides a thorough walkthrough of the publishing industry for aspiring nonfiction writers. Our guest is Jane Von Mehren, Senior Partner at Aevitas Creative Management and a former Senior Vice President at Random House. Jane explains the structure of the publishing industry, how to take your area of expertise and start thinking about a public-facing book, what agents are for, what agents look for in authors, what you should look for in an agent, how to find an agent, how to write a query letter to an agent and how to craft a book proposal that your agent can shop to publishers. Our patrons will also hear a bonus segment that discusses how an agent shops your proposal to publishers and what happens after that. We also talk money—what kind of advances can first time authors expect? And we provide a number of concrete tips on how to write for a general audience. All of that plus our What’s Good segment where Jane shares something good to read, do and listen to. To get the full interview, just go to Patreon.com/phantompower . Transcript [Robotic music] This is Phantom Power. Mack Hagood: Welcome to another episode of Phantom Power, a podcast that usually focuses on sound. Today is a bit of an exception. We’re doing an episode that many of you reached out and asked for. My guest today is Jane Von Mehren. Jane is a senior partner at Avitus Creative Management. She is a former senior vice president at Random House. She’s been an editor and publishing executive at Houghton Mifflin and Penguin. And then there’s the least of her accomplishments: she’s also my new agent! Today, we’re going to do a thorough walkthrough of the publishing industry for aspiring nonfiction writers. But before we get to that, a couple of quick notes: Wow. I just feel like we’ve been cruising through this season with this twice-a-month schedule. It’s already March and it’s been a little while since I mentioned what’s coming up in two weeks. We will have recent Princeton PhD in history, Benjamin Lindquist. Ben’s going to be talking about the history of talking computers. Next up is Marie Thompson of the Open University, who just co-edited a new special issue of the journal Senses and Society on tinnitus and the aesthetics of tinnitus, so that should be an interesting conversation. I had some folks ask for more tinnitus material, so I’m looking forward to that one. And soon we’ll be chopping it up with Neil Verma of Northwestern. We’re going to talk about his brand new book on narrative podcasting. I also want to remind you that we have a new feature where you can leave a comment, ask a question, or just say whatever you feel. Just go to speakpipe.com/phantom power, press the button, and start talking. I’d love to hear from you and maybe play your comments or questions on the show. So that’s speakpipe.com/phantom power. Okay. Onto today’s show. At the start of this season, I did an episode called “Going Public.” And in that episode, I talked about my interest in pivoting to more public writing and public scholarship. And I mentioned finding an agent and learning to navigate the space of non-academic publishing. And I heard from a number of you who said you’d like a deeper dive into that space. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Join Our Patreon! Send us a voice message! Rate this podcast! Ever wonder who’s to blame for the noise and distraction of the open office? Our guest has answers. Joseph L. Clarke is a historian of art and architecture and an associate professor at the University of Toronto. His 2021 book Echo’s Chambers: Architecture and the Idea of Acoustic Space won a 2022 CHOICE Award for Outstanding Academic Title. It’s a fascinating history of how architects have conceived of and manipulated the relationship between sound and space. His most recent publication is “Too Much Information: Noise and Communication in an Open Office.” In this episode we’ll talk about media theorist Marshall McLuhan and his architecturally inspired theory of acoustic space, which went on to have its own influence in the field of architecture. We’ll also dive deep into the history of the open plan office, the theories of acoustic communication that inspired it, the sonic disaster it became, and the new media technologies that were invented in response. If you’ve ever been driven to distraction by noise in a cubicle farm or open office and wondered how such a space came to be, this episode’s got answers! For our Patrons, we have another half hour of our interview, in which we cover the full history of architectural acoustics going back to the ancients and all the way up to the computer models of today. It’s really fascinating. You’ll also hear Joseph’s “What’s Good” segment, which is one of the best ever—some really unexpected selections for something good to read, listen to, and do. To join, go to Patreon.com/phantompower. Transcript Mack Hagood: All right, Joseph. Welcome to the show. Joseph L. Clarke: Thanks Mack. Mack Hagood: So you were just just telling me before that you are in Paris right now, in like some kind of 17th century building. Is that correct? Joseph L. Clarke: Oh yes. The building where I’m staying, it’s in the center of Paris. You know, all the buildings around me are kind of from the 17th, 18th, 19th centuries. So it’s a somewhat primitive space, but a very charming one. Mack Hagood: That sounds amazing. You really know how to do a research leave. What are you doing in Paris? Joseph L. Clarke: You know, I’m following up on some of the research that I did for my book. My book came out a few years ago, but I’m still trying to trace down some, some of the loose threads. I’m also just really interested in the conversations and the discourse around sound and space in France in relation to the conversations that we have in North America. I teach at the University of Toronto. This was, of course, the home of Marshall McLuhan, back in the fifties and sixties. Who came up with the idea of kind of popularizing the idea of acoustic space. Canada was also the home of people like R. Murray Schafer who you did a program on the podcast. So there’s a lot of interesting discussions in Canada around sound and the spatial environment. But in France, there’s a very long standing tradition of experimental music, Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today we bring you a masterclass in audiobook narration and acting with acclaimed actor, casting director, audiobook narrator and audiobook director, Robin Miles. Miles has narrated over 500 audiobooks, collecting numerous industry awards and, in 2017, was added to the Audible Narrator Hall of Fame. She’s the most recognizable voice in literary Afrofuturism, having interpreted books by Octavia E. Butler, Nalo Hopkinson, N.K. Jemisin, and Nnedi Okorafor. Miles holds a BA and an MFA from Yale. She has taught young actors and narrators at conservatories across the country and she has an amazing talent for doing accents—something we really dig deep into on this podcast. In this conversation we talk about technique, the audiobook industry, and the politics of vocal representation. How do we avoid the misrepresentation of marginalized people on the one hand and vocal typecasting on the other? For our Patrons we have almost an hour of additional content, including our What’s Good segment where Robin unsurprisingly makes some really great book recommendations! If you want hear all the bonus content, just go to patreon.com/phantompower. Membership starts at just three dollars a month and helps pay the expenses of producing the show. Transcript [Robotic music] This is phantom power. [Brass band playing] Mack Hagood: Welcome to another episode of phantom power. I’m Mack Hagood. Today we’re bringing you a masterclass in audiobook narration and acting with acclaimed audiobook narrator, Robin Miles. But first, if you’re wondering about the brass band music in the background, I just got back from Carnival in my hometown, New Orleans, Louisiana. And man, my heart is full, but my body is a bit depleted. As I said the other day on Facebook, the Fatter the Tuesday, the Ashier the Wednesday. I got into New Orleans on Friday, ate some good food with the family. Saturday, it was all parades Uptown. My wife Bridget was marching in a parade. My boys Abe and Theo were taking it all in with me, catching all the throws. Sunday was Abe’s 17th birthday. We celebrated with family and friends. And then the next day was Lundi Gras and we did a second line down Bourbon Street through the French Quarter with my wife’s marching crew, the Dames de Perlage. The Dames learned beadwork from the famed Mardi Gras Indians, and they work on these amazing beaded costumes all year long. In fact, Bridget listens to a lot of audio books–especially those narrated by Robin Miles–while she works on her beadwork every night. And so it was amazing to just see the fellowship of these women out in the street. Dancing to the sounds of the Big Fun brass band that y’all just heard just now. What a beautiful day. And then and then on Fat Tuesday I hung out in the Marigny area. There were a lot of great DJs with small mobile sound systems on different corners. And we were just dancing in the streets all day. And then it was Ash Wednesday. The next day, after all the day-long drinking and fried food and King cake, I ate vegan all day. How’s that for repentance? And I went and bought some Louisiana music and history books at Blue Cypress Books uptown. And I even went to church. Although I didn’t get any ashes because I haven’t been to confession in about 40 years. Like I said, my body’s depleted, but man, my soul is full. It was just so beautiful. So real. The only time I touched my phone was to, you know, take a picture or meet up with somebody. And man, do it. If you haven’t been there, go. Okay, let’s talk about today’s guest. I am so excited. Robin Miles is an American actor, Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today’s guest is Carolyn Birdsall, Associate Professor of Media Studies, University of Amsterdam. If you’re a scholar of sound or radio, you likely know her work, particularly her monograph Nazi Soundscapes (AUP, 2012) which was the recipient of the ASCA Book Award in 2013. Her new book, Radiophilia (Bloomsbury, 2023), examines the love of radio through history. It will be a great value to anyone–from novice to expert–who wants to understand radio studies and think about where it should go in the future. In this wide-ranging interview, we discuss Carolyn’s career and both of her books. We also get into the present state of radio and media studies, as well as the kind of skeptical orientation to media that tends to set sound studies scholars apart from many of their peers. And for our Patrons we’ll have Carolyn’s What’s Good segment, with something good to read, listen to, and do. You can join us at patreon.com/phantompower. Today’s show was edited by Matt Parker. Transcript and web content by Katelyn Phan. Transcript [Robotic voice] This is Phantom Power Mack Hagood: Welcome to another episode of Phantom Power, where we talk to incredibly smart and creative, talented people about sound. I’m Mack Haggood. And if I sound a little Barry White-ish, it’s because I have COVID and I’m not feeling great. But I already had an interview in the can, and I just wanted to get this out to you on schedule if possible, I think that’s going to happen. And today’s guest is Carolyn Birdsall. If you’re a scholar of sound or radio, I imagine you already know her work. She’s one of those people who represent the benefit that I get personally out of doing this show, which is I get to finally meet people whose work I’ve been engaging with for a long time. Carolyn’s definitely one of those people. There’s so much I could have talked to her about including her research on television sound or her methodological work on sensory history or doing oral history. Some of her theoretical work on epistemology and the humanities. But in this interview, I chose to focus on her two books first. Her award winning 2012 book, Nazi Soundscapes. If there’s any canon at all in historical sound studies, Nazi Soundscapes certainly is in that canon. So we talked about that book for a while. And then we also talk about her new book, which is radiophilia. Radiophilia is a term that she coined as she examines the love of radio. And I think of Radiophilia as an established scholar book. Quite often a scholar will make their name researching something very specific, say soundscapes in the Nazi era, for example. And they make their contributions there and then they build out a career and then later in their career after teaching for a decade or more and reading tons of other people’s work and really getting a strong sense of the lay of the land in their field of expertise. They put out something more general, something that’s a little more reflexive in terms of thinking about the field as a whole. Where the field has been, where it should go. And that’s the kind of book that a senior scholar tends to write in part because only a senior scholar could write that kind of book. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today we share a podcast episode on the visual epistemology of astronomy by our friends at The World According to Sound. What kind of knowledge do we really gain when we look at images from space? Longtime listeners to this show will remember The World According to Sound. As we referred to them two years ago, WATS is a team of two rogue audionauts who rebelled against the NPR mothership: Chris Hoff and Sam Harnett. Tired of sound playing second fiddle to narrative on NPR, they launched a micro podcast that held one unique sound under the microscope for 90 seconds each episode. Later, WATS became much more ambitious, producing live sonic odysseys in 8-channel surround sound and live online sound journeys during the pandemic. Since then, Harnett and Hoff have embarked on another project. For the past couple of years, they have been partnering with different universities to translate humanities research into compelling sound-designed narrative podcasts. The first season of Ways of Knowing was produced in partnership with the University of Washington and it focused on different analytical methods and disciplines in the humanities, from close reading, deconstruction, and translational analysis, to black studies, material culture, and disability studies. The second season just wrapped up. It’s called Cosmic Visions and it’s produced in collaboration with Johns Hopkins University and that’s what we’ll hear an episode from today. Just this week, they dropped the last episode of season two and now the entire series is available on The World According to Sound website. We wanted to draw your attention to this series because turning humanities research and sound art into a sonic narrative experience was the original mission of Phantom Power. We know that many of you are interested in this area of humanities podcasting as well, so if you’re not already a fan of Chris and Sam’s work, check it out. We also wanted to share this particular episode because it also provides one answer to a tricky question: How do you do a sonic explication of something that is entirely visual? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Subscribe to Phantom Power Support the podcast on Patreon Rate and review on Apple or Spotify Today Mack talks about one of his oldest companions, the tinnitus that lives rent-free in his head. Tinnitus can be annoying, for sure–and for some people it’s much worse than annoying–but it also has a lot to say of interest, if we’re willing to listen: “Tinnitus has been my guide in sound studies, my Virgil, leading me through a shadow world of sound. It’s taught me how high the stakes can be when it comes to the perception and control of sound and it’s given me new ways to think about how and why we use media devices.” Today we’ll learn the basics of tinnitus and hear some tinnitus stories–everyone with tinnitus has one and these stories can teach us a lot about sound and the self. Maybe tinnitus has earned that rent-free headspace, after all. Today’s show was written and edited by Mack Hagood. Music is by Joel Styzens. The composition “A Sharp” appears on his album Relax Your Ears. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices