WFMU’s Webhamster, Henry Lowengard, offers his annual list of the Top 10 Imaginary Sound Events of 2008. He writes:
Hello Music Lovers!
It’s that time again – time to imagine what I could have been listening to (or composing) in 2008!
http://www.wfmu.org/~jhhl/Best/
All previous years’ lists are also there for your imaginary listening pleasure.
- Blow This End! (Winded: 2008)
A bouquet of experimental wind instrument solos and duets by "P. J.
Lapmar" and "Kenny H." None of the instruments (flute, alto sax,
horn…) are blown in the proper embouchure, and in some cases, new
holes were drilled into their bodies. - Oil You Need is Love (ESAS Records: 2008)
A quickly made techno-y single, from Environmentally Shaken and
Stirred, featuring synth waveforms based on the erratic price of oil in
2008. - Your Call May Be Monitored For Quality Control (CommunicationBiz Training Tapes: 2008)
Ever wonder about that little phrase you hear when you finally get to a human agent in an IVR call tree?
Here’s an audio guidebook for supervisors to critique the agent’s performance, with real recorded examples. - Synching of You (ZZZ: 2008)
A catchy pop tune, featuring a little riff based on the GSM synch noise
an iPhone makes every once in a while when it’s near a speaker.
Makes your pals whip out and turn off their iPhones in embarrassment. - C-r T-lk (Cl-k-n-Cl-k: mp3 2008)
"Language Removal Service" –
like work done on the Magliozzi brothers of Car Talk fame: only the
guffaws and chuckles remain. A great companion to the WFMU "Shemp
Meditation Tapes" put together by Dave the Spazz. - "Fly Me to the Moon" and Other Hits of the ISS (NASA Media: 2007)
What do they sing in the International Space Station? These monitor recordings tell you! - Paleo News Supplement Vol. XXXVII (Journals of Expensive Science: 2008)
Ancient
Mammals: giant sloths, mastodons, titanotheres — what did they sound
like?
In this special supplement, Dr. Cornelia Leonard and Dr. Misha Verbena
recreate the sound of vanished mammals by modeling the internal spaces
in their fossilized skulls. - Semiotics of Palintology: I Don’t Know – Alaska! (ThesisGal08@myDissertations.com: 2008)
In the best tradition of backward masking "decoding," we have here a
deep dissection of every word, every nuance, every possible meaning of
the sum total of all publicly available speeches of Sarah Palin from
the announcement of her vice Presidential candidacy to election day.
Annotated video by "ThesisGal". - My Lobster Is Grinning, Barbara Jane, Barbara Jane b/w [Tacit] (1-2-3-4-5-6-7": 2008)
I
sincerely hope this hypnotic collection of tuned syllables gets some
airplay somewhere. I can’t decide which side is better. I can’t even
tell them apart since the disk has no label. Not only is "Lobster" cut
with 12 intersecting elliptical lock grooves, [Tacit] on the B side has
a hard to count number of partial drone tracks of various lengths,
almost literally "cuts", which end abruptly — forcing a jump to some nearby groove or other. - Bow Brass Bars and Bosses (Polarity Recordings: 2008)
C. P. Ohrfeiger spent a lot of time in the forges of the Far East and
came back with ideas and time tested formulas for building a better
gong. Each of her gongs is a sandwich of denser metal over thin,
flexible laminated steel. After she learned how to grind away the
nodes, she found she could make a gong in any shape and have its sound
evolve through time with a long sustain. By carefully combining rows of
these metal plates over resonators and bowing them, the sound space in
this 5.1 quintaural recording breaks open and then nestles into your
head.