The individual pieces have reached me in the same order that the music has appeared on the site. I have found that in this order, the music has been nicely, accidentally, and dynamically sequenced. There is not much direction, save for a few ground rules, timelines, and the length of the contributions. As it happens, conversations ensue during the early stages of “contract”, and I have found great benefit in being on this unique side of the creative process. And in the very act of sending or receiving an email, an unplanned, unwitting element of a piece music’s constitution is almost always established.

It is not surprising to learn that inspiration has come from many aesthetic areas, and sometimes from the ether. In many cases, the musicians are in a very real way inspired by the site itself. By the individuals engaged in conversation here, by the hashing out of certain philosophical theories, and by the people themselves. In other words, the infinite dialogue that is put into motion by art and expression can find its way back to ultimately influence the art and expression, in ways small and significant. It’s unique and endearing, and humbling, to be a part in some way of this flurry of creativity.

One conversation took place over the last two months, as Keith Rowe and I briefly exchanged ideas, interests and backgrounds in email. Invariably, when I share my field of work (underwater acoustics) with musicians, it is met with genuine interest. It is certainly thrilling for me that Martin Küchen, Rowe and others are enthusiastic about my own area of work. After all, these are the people who steal time from my family so that I can have some intimacy with a recording every day.

Conversation and shared interests, among other things, inspired this piece from Rowe, called “location (day+night 6)”. As he explained to me, this piece is about location. It is also a matter of the direction that Rowe continues to pursue with the use of various radios in his music. “Location” was created using only radios, and refers to the two sets of geographical coordinates at which the source recordings were captured. The first location is a discovered hot spot of electro-magnetic activity. The second is more serene in terms of wave travel, and is in fact the spot on earth Rowe calls home. And there you have the 8:50 stretch of time available to you here.

The recording was captured using longwave (day) and shortwave (night) radios. The differences between short and longwave transmissions and modulations are many. The shared element is the medium. The speed of frequency through air is roughly 1200 ft/sec, day or night. (compare with propagation through water: 4800 ft/sec). Different mediums have different effects on what is ultimately “heard”, whether the signal is modulated or not. Imagine a recording of selected transmissions and signals through 100 meters of steel.

In a similar way, the choice of instrumentation (radios) have not-so-random effects on what you ultimately hear. Longwave transmissions have the luxury of a relatively long wavelength. Long enough, in fact, that they are able to gradually bend and naturally refract through the air medium without ever coming in contact with the ground or atmospheric layers. They are also most often directional transmissions. Shortwave, on the other hand, have such small wavelengths that they have no choice but to penetrate these boundaries, refract in their travels, and re-penetrate until ultimately reaching the receiver. Shortwave also suffers from reflective interference. These losses in propagation occur in every medium.

Radio artists, we can assume, are very conscious of these details and so choose their tools much in the same way a saxophonist chooses his reed, or a guitarist his gauge of strings.

In these choices of instrumentation, production, and in inspiration, all of the music in the listen series share things in common. It has been incredibly exciting to moderate, since Tomas Korber and I first discussed the possibilities of such a project. Each time I hear a piece of music for the first time, I’m overwhelmed by the effort and commitment to such a small slice of time that gets filled with new, stimulating sounds from varied sources and personalities. Some efforts have been collaborative, some purely individual. They have all been touching. There are two final installments to follow, and with them I eagerly await that first “listen” as I have for the last year.

Here is Keith’s contribution to the series, unlike anything I’d heard from him prior; yet undeniably Rowe, in tone and delivery. Captured 28 July, 2006.