As some of you may know, I ran an “audio documentary” podcast from 2020-2022 entitled Anechoic Chamber. This show was a collective search for essentiality that I felt was an appropriate response to confrontation with mortality - both during the COVID lockdown nightmare, and the period preceding and following my brother’s death. 

 

This show had some historical precedents in “info-taining” audio releases such as Achim Wollscheid’s “Ambivalenz & Askese” and Throbbing Gristle’s “Grief”. Like those documents, I constructed each A.C. episode as an ambient sonic collage over which each guest’s insights would float freely. Though what they said was elicited by my questioning, I did my best to minimize my own presence and to let their statements stand on their own merits. At this time I had also sickened of the Joe Rogan-style “celebrity interviewer” format, and felt this would be an interesting inversion of the wretched “influencer” culture.

 

This did, I suppose, at least have some commonality with what the major conversational podcasts marketed themselves as: a desire to step across the demarcation lines of my own culture, and thereby promote peace at a time when ideological absolutism had reached an apparent point of no return.

 

I ended this project in 2022 because of the limited prospects for it to continue living up to its name (which, I realize now, is also shared by probably a half dozen other podcasts!!!). I could have built the show completely on guest appearances by colleagues within the sound arts world, but at that point, I’d be working against the explicitly stated purpose of the show. I also had hopes of being granted an audience with at least a couple prospective guests who had a "high profile" within alternative media, but I severely overestimated the degree to which they were willing to make time for small-scale guerrilla operations such as my own. Some other potential guests outside of my milieu didn’t want the association being made between them and what they perceived as “experimental” art.

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You can listen to, and download, all the available episodes from the episodes from the original 24-hour series run in the player below. There is some "lost" material which I need to recover, so please be patient as I track this down and edit it. Over time I also hope to have a bullet-pointed "guide" to the topics covered on each episode, in case certain names, events, or concepts make no sense without additional explanation (this was included on each of the original episodes when they were still hosted on Soundcloud. Providing full credit for in-episode music is also on my agenda, this will be completed soon.

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Please contact me if you would like an uncompressed version of any episode, if you want to make a "take down" request, or simply have additional questions related to this content.

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Thanks for your support! - Thomas

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