Month: March 2024

Wireless nights is a program hosted by Pulp’s frontman Jarvis Cocker. The show blends story telling, music and soundscapes in an attempt to capture themes of night, dreams and the surreal. Each episode transports the listener into late night experiences, featuring interviews, fictional narration and real-life stories from people he meets along the way. Through evocative sound design and Cocker’s very distinctive narration, I have always enjoyed listening with my eyes closed.

The show offers such a unique and immersive experience it can be enjoyed in any mindset and often helps me to visualise the world I’m listening to. To produce the show, Jarvis Cocker uses a combination of field recordings, studio interviews and narration which are all layered together during post-production along with ambient noises and compositions. For my own practise, I have been interested in recording sounds and moments throughout my day using my phone as a way of documenting and creating new associations with my sonic experiences.

In preparation for our piece, Patrick and Arad worked on a draft script which helped outline each of our tasks. Using the script I can map out key points throughout the narration where sound can be used in aid to comedic or dramatic effect. Through general discussion over our group chat, we planned out the recording sessions and what we ideally want from them. My job is to create an alien like transmission which interrupts the fictional caller skit. I’m looking forward to experimenting with these prompts and ideas as this will be my first time working with a script. I am curious as to how challenging it will be to create a whole atmosphere using a radio as an instrument.

Notes:

• Montage of distorted news clips and soundbites
• Layered audio of people speaking in multiple languages
• Soundscapes of city streets and distant sirens
• Ambient recordings of natural environments
• Industrial
• Manipulate advertisement to make unappealing to buyer
• Field recordings of reverberated areas
• Excerpts from old radio dramas and sci-fi shows
• Samples of political speakers
• Broken Conversations
• Alien vocabulary

Using a cassette 4 track, I played around with recording the radio accompanied by an ambient sample I created with my guitar. Here are two notable clips I made.