Shipwreck Radio - July 6

It’s that time of year when a (no longer) young man’s thoughts turn naturally to the Sonic Structures and Enigmatic Episodes of Shipwreck Radio. Read the introduction to this series here.

JULY 6 - SHIPWRECK RADIO VOLUME ONE

Here is another track where the opening chimes are drawn out into a stutter and the welcome is processed into a pulse that barely hints at the original source. Once that sputtering opening has passed, we move into a low sonorous tone with a gentle gonging rhythm riding upon it. Alongside the metallic, gonglike ringing, there’s an almost cymbalic, dragging metal tone that builds and repeats. As the song approaches the four minute mark, all these sounds build and intensify, then a pair of hissing whistles joins, slicing through the sonic structure of the track, setting the stage for the heart of the track; the low and gentle thrum of the base tones, the meditative rhythm of the two metallic elements, like gongs in a peaceful temple, and then the disquieting whistles, complicating and breaking the otherwise pensive soundscape. 

The hissing divides and dances with itself, nearly drowning out the underlying sounds as we approach the seven and a half minute mark, the meditative opening of the song seeming to fade away, a mere reminder as the whistling dominates the track, lurking in the background as the warbling shrieks pierce deep into your skull. The whistle never quite manages to drown out the meditative drone and ringing though, leaving the listener to find it beneath the sharp edges. Then after the eleven minute mark the hissing is chopped up, stuttered out like the opening chimes, and what should be stabbing is somehow softened as though the shorter whistle doesn’t have the piercing power that it did when it was long continues shrieks.  This lets the contemplative base of the song, the low rolling tones and the reflective metallic rhythm re-emerge, until the thirteenth minute mark when the spiking whistling begins to lengthen ever so subtly, becoming uneven, until it speeds into pulsing dings at the fourteen minute mark, the base having faded away, leaving these pin sharp hisses until they too fade away as the song ends. 

Here is another well-wrought transmission from Shipwreck Radio, building a simple, mesmerizing, contemplative base and then complicating it… Showing how one can hold onto the meditative even in the face of blaring distraction… and then, when one focuses, showing how you can even find the ruminative quality in something seemingly unpleasant as a  keening whistle.