Under Construction

February 21, 2020 | 00:07:48

It’s been a minute, so in this short episode, we update you on what’s happening with Phantom Power and what’s coming in 2020.

The big (and sad) news is that co-host cris cheek is departing. After two years of lending his unique voice, ideas, and turns of phrase to the show–not to mention producing fantastic episodes like his interview with This Heat’s Charles Hayward–cris has decided to refocus on his many other creative endeavors.

We will miss cris, but the show will go on. And he’s been kind enough to let us continue using his golden intro! Check out the pod to hear about some of our upcoming 2020 episodes, with guests including Colin Black, Harriet Ottenheimer, Jonathan Sterne, and Siavash Amini.

Transcript

[low humming and static playing]

This

is

Phantom Power.

[cars driving with birds chirping in background]

[soft organ plays from lowest key to highest key]

[Mack Hagood]

Strange tones echoing through my Cincinnati neighborhood

[birds chirping with soft tones in background]

bubbling up from underground.

[tones go from low to high]

[WATER SERVICE WORKER]

Alright..

[MACK, laughs]

That is crazy.

[background talking of construction workers with tones playing and birds chirping]

Wow.

Standing in front of my house is this guy from the Cincinnati water department. He’s in front of an open manhole cover. And he’s got a microphone lowered down into the manhole.

[tones and birds chirping playing in background]

And about a block down the street. There’s another open manhole cover. And the tone generator is making the sounds that we hear this upward sweep of tones. It’s called acoustic emission testing, I think. And it’s a sonic way of figuring out if the the water pipes are in good repair. I rather enjoyed the acoustic testing. But unfortunately, it was a harbinger of [laughs] less pleasant sounds that were soon to come.

[loud jackhammers, machines stoping and going]

All the water lines in my early 1900s neighborhood are being torn out and replaced, which, of course, means that all of the streets are being torn out and replaced. And it’s a it’s been a loud experience. Jackhammers. Yeah, this is what it sounds like inside the house.

[machine sounds.]

Idling trucks.

[idling truck noise]

Those are probably the worst, the constant idling machines everywhere. And so hey, it seemed like a perfect time to go ahead and get the roof replaced.

[laughing]

Just throw that into the ongoing cacophony.

[Hammering and footsteps coming through the ceiling]

This is the sound of my roof being torn off, right above my head as I sit in my office where I record this podcast.

[Hammering and tearing]

So yeah, it’s been a little louder around here, a little bit difficult to produce a podcast under these circumstances.

[truck idling]

And it’s fitting because Phantom Power is a little bit under construction, you might say, we’re going through some changes. And so I just want to fill you in on them. The big thing is that cris cheek, my good friend, and partner in this podcast for the past couple of years, is leaving. When we originally set out to make this podcast, we planned on it lasting a year, maybe two years. And it’s become an ongoing concern. And it’s been a lot of fun to do. It’s also very challenging to do. It’s quite time consuming, putting together the show the way we want to put it together. And cris just really felt that this was taking away time from his his poetry and his performance and his visual art and all the amazing things that cris does. So, it’s just gonna be me solo now. And I’m gonna miss having cris, his unique voice, his unique turns of phrase, his oblique angles of analysis. You know, he’s what he’s a one of a kind. And so the show goes on.

[Music playing]

And we’ve got some fascinating episodes coming your way in the next few months, we’re going to drop the episodes as we get them done. In the next week or two, I’m going to have a show on radio art that features the Australian sound artist Colin Black, who does really fantastic work.

[background talking] [machine beeping]

That’s gonna be great. I’m gonna have a series of podcasts,

[soft tapping]

at least two on voice. And that’s going to feature the linguist Harriet Oppenheimer,

[opening desktop sound]

and I’ve already done an interview for this series

[opening desktop sound]

with the sound studies scholar, Jonathan Sterne.

[recording of Jonathan Stern]

My voice, and the voice, whatever that is can never be one thing.

Not to a subject, not to an auditor,not to a system of meaning.

[upbeat ending music]

[Mack Hagood]

I also have an interview coming up with the Iranian sound artist and musician, Siavash Amini–something I’ve been really wanting to do for quite some time.

[music playing]

So there’s a lot of good stuff coming up. And I just wanted to sort of drop a really mini episode here into your feed, let you know what was going on. And let you know that there’s more to come. And it was very nice of cris. He’s letting us keep the intro. So you’ll still get to hear cris’s golden pipes at the start of every episode. All right, take care. Talk to you soon.

[music ends]