#roamtransmissions

Happy Nearly New Year, ROAMers! As the new year approaches we come closer to the threshold that divides us from Then and Now. It is a time where we look back to preserve just as we look forward to divest.    The two-faced Janus looks both forward and backward, blessed with a double-vision that allows for seeing into the future and the past at the same time. Here at ROAM, we believe that sound recording and manipulation allow sound scientists to create new hybrid soundforms that are capable of replicating the Janus’s peculiar visual enhancement but for the ears instead of the eyes. In this seventh installment of our ROAM for the Holidaze compilation we unveil the fruits of some of the greatest examples of this type of soundform cultivation. Listening both forward and backward as present memories give way to future nostalgias, our contributors share intimate moments, fantasies, nightmares, and the joys of making a racket. Won’t you lend us your ears for the latest in this sonically satisfying holiday tradition? HUGE THANKS to our collaborators (in the order they appear): Todd Fink. Derek Pressnall, Dave Hughes, Sam Martin, Dereck Higgins, Jordan Noel, Madeline Adams, Beije, Magicicada, Cole Alexander & Zumi Rosow, Katie Robertson, Clyde Petersen, Zopi Kristjanson, Wil Wright, & Longmont Potion Castle. Headphones required. [Champagne bottle pop SFX] Formed in 2009, ROAM is an experimental podcast series that features themed found sound collages gathered from artists across the world. Listen to last year’s compilation. ROAM is for your ears to see

On this episode of Roam vs. Wild, we asked our ROAMers to gather sounds from their ecosystems and mold new soundscapes, create new lifeforms. The creatures we hear on this transmission are sure to encourage your feral side to stretch wide. We safari through the concrete jungle of Colombia, through the towering rain forests of the Congo. We hear creatures never heard on tape before! The ROAM staff collaged these aural samples together to paint a sonic portrait of indigenous wildlife in a wondrous new composite. The aural artifact that remains is exquisite in it's ability to lure the listener across the suspension bridge of disbelief. For this journey remember, your ears are the camera lens. Pack a dry pair of socks, your best headphones and the imagination you were born with and ROAM into the wild! Beware the pheromones of the curious boingo beetle, for his powers are still not yet completely known. Rest up and roam hard! A huge thank you to this month's wild contributors: Tera Buerkle Adam Bruneau Amy Cobden Joe Dames Josh Fowler Matt Magnuson Bob Nanna Cyrus Shamir Chris White

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Curated by David Matysiak, engineered by Mason Brown, conceptualized by Devin Brown, and designed by Jordan Noel, ROAM is a monthly experimental podcast that marries individual audio collages based on a theme and a new cast of contributors. ROAM is all about sonically scoring moments for our collective digital time capsule. ROAM is for your ears to see.

Dearly Beloved Listeners:

Do you remember the last time you received a love letter? The last time you wrote one?

There is a fear in this print-weary Information Age of ours that letters of all sorts, but perhaps especially love letters, will join the dinos and the dodos as an extinct genre of expression.

Who will carry on the traditions of such formidable romantic scribblers as F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald or of Abelard and Heloise who arguably exchanged the greatest erotic correspondences in all of Western history?

At ROAM we believe the love letter is not a dying breed. Rather it is in desperate need of formal mutation. That is why we charged the contributors to the latest in this ongoing podcast series to create a sound piece that centers upon the topic of Love in all its many manifestations.

Each contribution to this month’s lovelorn installment of ROAM is addressed explicitly or implicitly to a specific person, place, pet, process, product, or concept that weakens our contributors’ knees, that makes their hearts race and their palms sweat when they think of it, him, or her.

But because all is fair on the battlefield of love we issued a challenge to each of our contributors:

Since “love” means so very many things to so many people it occupies a strange and indeterminate space in our lexicon. Due to this problem with love’s legibility we asked our contributors to use synonyms, analogues, placeholders, and silences in their submissions where they might otherwise have used the word “love.”

In our podcast dedicated to Eros our contributors therefore launch their love barbs like little Cupids-in-training without once uttering the “L” word.

Having received our cache of perfume-redolent, secret admirer-style, and missed connections-esque audio correspondences, the curators at ROAM then lovingly sequenced our contributors’ submissions, punctuating each sonic epistle with found sounds appropriated from soap operas, telenovelas, and the dating game shows of yesteryear.   

The resulting 20-minute journey through love’s winding passageways is the type of many-faceted gemstone you might like to plunk on the ring finger of your beloved. Or else it’s the kind of thing that’ll inspire you to pull a Lloyd Dobler, hoisting blaring boomboxes to the heavens in hopes of finally getting your sweetheart’s attention.                      

Contributors:

Madeline Adams Bowen Betts Mason Brown Will Fussell Tim Kasher Josh McKay David Matysiak Bob Nanna Jordan Noel Chris White

*** Roam is a new monthly podcast series curated by David Matysiak, engineered by Mason Brown, conceptualized by Devin Brown, and designed by Jordan Noel. ***

On New Year’s Day 2014 Roam–a new monthly podcast series curated by David Matysiak, engineered by Mason Brown, and conceptualized by Devin Brown–will present its annual winter Coco Art audio compilation Roam 4 the Holidaze. The fifth installment in an ongoing series that began in winter 2009, Roam 4 the Holidaze 5 features recordings by 26 musicians, artists, and everyday field recordists who hail from parts as near as Metro Atlanta and as geographically far afield as Israel and India.

Unlike in years past, Matysiak challenged contributors to isolate “found sounds” captured in 2013 and to use this documentary material to craft their sonic submissions. Matysiak’s intention was to create an aural time capsule of sorts, a document of idiosyncratic and highly personal moments from the past year that listeners can train their attentions to as they look forward to what awaits them in 2014.

But these new criteria for submissions are not the only new additions to this year’s Roam 4 the Holidaze compilation. Instead of presenting the collection as a series of discrete tracks as they have done in the past, Matysiak and Mason Brown have instead carefully sequenced and segued all of the submissions into a single, continuous listening experience.

Clocking in at just under one hour, Roam 4 the Holidaze 5 invites listeners to explore the time-bound environments, moods, and textures that each of its contributors have captured and manipulated while emphasizing also the ways in which these experiences are themselves interconnected as reflections of a tightly-webbed community of artists, musicians, documentarians, and friends.

Roam 4 the Holidaze 5 also inaugurates the new Roam podcast series, which will release a theme-driven audio journey ten times per year on the first Monday of every month. (A summer installment of Roam will be released in July/August and Roam for the Holidaze will return in its sixth iteration in January of 2015.)

Roam’s next podcast, “To Roam with Love,” will tackle the topics of romance, fidelity, and the variably long and short shelf lives of romantic relationships. It will be released here on February 3rd.

Thank you thank you thank you to all of the amazingly talented and über inspiring collaborators this year: