The Glam Rock Experience

This podcast explores the 'Glam Rock' of the 1970s. I introduce the listener to a concert space and interview some pretend fans to introspect why they may be interested in listening or going to Glam Rock concerts. The podcast takes the listener back in time to see where and how this genre was born. Interviews of David Bowie and other artists come in and out with interwoven music to create a discourse about the significance of glam rock in popular music culture. I also talk about the superficial presentations that these musicians would perform when going on stage. There is a relationship between technology and identity construction from the glam rock genre, which created a subculture of followers and fans alike. I also changed the voice pitch of my recorded material, to create an androgynous effect. The Glam Rock genre in many ways glamorized stardom, fame, and art through the music vehicle. Musicians and performers were able to explore their identities as men dressing as women or wearing makeup, to exaggerate female characteristics and question gender differences. When listening to this podcast, it's important to imagine yourself as a listener and participant in a live concert space, where you can envision a scene of over-the-top rock music theatre, where the costumes are just important as the music. With that said, Glam Rock was a transformative period that went to create an excessive experience of sight and sound. Disclaimer note: original interview and music audio material were from Youtube, and the rest were from personal recordings.

The Glam Rock Experience

Global Beats: World Fusion Illusion

What is “World fusion” music? "Global Beats: World Fusion Illusion" sets out to explore the topic, focusing on the various approaches to creating music within this genre and the potential outcomes of musical globalization. Tied in with this theme of a global musical culture are the inherent issues of access, origin, production, and dissemination. How do these variables affect the mental construction of other cultures in the minds of consumers? This podcast invites listeners into a rich sonic landscape of worldbeat samples, with hopes of shedding some light on a widely misunderstood genre.

Global Beats: World Fusion Illusion

Sonorous Fractals

This episode of Sonorous Fractals investigates the relationship between listening and argumentation. This podcast pivots around the question: can listening be an argument? Attempting to answer this question leads Justin, our host, into the archives. Sifting through ancient texts and interviewing experts in the field, Justin is able to discern how listening has come to be understood as a passive sense. However, simply foregrounding our problematic relationship to listening is insufficient. Utilizing the work of avant-garde artists like Pierre Schaeffer, John Cage, Paul D. Miller, and Girl Talk, Justin traces the emancipatory potentiality of using listening as a mode of invention. He argues that listening to the ordinary sounds of the everyday provides artists with an index of possible tropes that tap directly into social memory. In other words, it affords artists the ability to resonate with their audience, persuading them into different states of being. Our handsome host concludes by noting that listening is a mode of argumentative invention because it provides arguers a reservoir of relevant sounds to guide the assembly of a piece.

Sonorous Fractals: The Podcast

The first minute of Jukebox Capriccio by Christian Marclay : a Listening by Andrew Edwards

Sounds crackle, an object emerges. Flickering and popping. It collapses and wiggles, then explodes outwards again, forming a recognizable representational image in my mind, though shrouded in more twisting and contortions. Its almost impossible for the landscape not to take on recognizable forms here. Higher brighter sharpness shoot out of the main form. They coalesce into a denser form and then collapse. One cycle emerges, repeating and folding back into itself while a second tries to form recognizable images but is continually exploding out of it. The whole field forms a jumble and then Breaks into a static screech. A cascading rhythm falls away then trickles in itself lower. Wiggles and thumps. A twisting blast and then hoarse wheezing honks loop. Melody tracks slips beneath moving honks wheezing. Recognizable rhythms attempt to emerge, but on top of them a twisting melding stream spirals around and then falls away. Three trains of motion, One: rhythms chomping away until they form another cascade that falls from high to low, while TWO; The wiggle melody is trying to squirm its way though, while THIRD: A steady chordal harmonic song is rising. Then as the First falls into cascade the Second twists and spirals in on itself, and the drumming rhythms take over the field. A honk emerges and folds itself to the right. The THREE forms battle for the stage as the rightward honking blasts one, two, three. It is growing with higher blips. Rhythm and shards of melody loop and continue… This work is dense, with multiple lines twisting alongside each other. The stage is never still, with new lines pushing down others continually. It is always changing.

Marvin Gaye - What's Happening Brother?

A well-worn rhythmic mechanism—effortlessly equalized, synchronized and syncopated—impels the sound forward with a self-assured, steady gait. There are luminous voices hovering above that seem impossibly distant. They are garnished with exuberant swells of horns, strings, and a tiny precious bell, almost overpoweringly effusive, for a centerpiece. Marvin’s lead vocal is imbued with a tender determination; its coarseness is charmed into clarity and its straining is seduced into something much sweeter. His voice is bound to the rhythm beneath by chains of cacophonous consonants, but stretches nobly, tonally upward toward the heavenly hosts singing “ooh” and “aah” above. The rising and falling of Marvin’s voice functions in a frustrated teeter-totter with these untouchably close singing sirens. It seems just as Marvin relinquishes his side of the struggle, cascading back into a tired sigh, the sonorous objects of his affection take notice and reach down towards him. The rhythm, meanwhile, remains indifferent to this antagonism and continues chugging along below it. Ultimately, it seems the consistency, between the song's words and sonic illustrations, is what serves it well in articulating a case for listeners to stop and consider 'what's happening?'