Sound Matters
Bang & Olufsen presents Sound Matters: a series of podcasts looking at – and listening to – all the sounds of the world around us. Forthcoming instalments will investigate all kinds of sounds that happen in our noisy cosmos, how we listen to them, the stories we tell about them, and all the ideas, inventions, discoveries, possibilities and ideas that live in the realm of the audible. Written and produced by Tim Hinman and supported by Bang & Olufsen.
Episodes
May 10, 2020 • 23 mins
“Making sense of sound is a biological triumph,” says Nina Kraus, professor at Northwestern University and a specialist in the biology of auditory learning. “What’s auditory learning?” you may well ask Nina. Well, you could boil it down to a simple question: how is it that we humans are able to make sense of sound and all the noise? This episode of Bang & Olufsen’s Sound Matters podcast goes for a deep sonic dive into evolution, mu...
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April 9, 2020 • 20 mins
This is the story of a river. Not just any river, but a very special river. One that has been given the same legal status as a living, breathing human being. In this episode of Bang & Olufsen’s Sound Matters podcast we meet the documentary film and audio maker, Rikke Hout, and travel down the Whanganui River in New Zealand. The Whanganui is one of the longest rivers in the country, and in 2017 was given the same legal identity as a...
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December 19, 2019 • 20 mins
“It’s a description of the next record that I will never make,” so relates UK based composer, DJ and artist Matthew Herbert, telling us about his new book, The Music – now Herbert can add writer to his CV of creative activities. But, true to his eclectic back catalogue of work, his new work is not just any novel – it’s a novel of sounds: “It’s supposed to exist in other people’s heads… I like the idea of personal interpretation,” c...
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December 19, 2019 • 25 mins
Music. Oh, beautiful, uplifting, inspiring music. We all love music. Thing is, we all love different types of music, and generally can’t bear to listen to the music we don’t like. But can certain types of music be so bad that they can actually harm you? In this episode we take a deep dive into a world of often conflicting, sometimes highly unconventional ideas around so-called pathological music and meet Dr James Kennaway of Roeham...
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December 19, 2019 • 22 mins
True crime podcasts are almost a cliche nowadays. But in terms of niches, there’s still some cache in the sound of true crime, or more specifically in the field of forensic audio analysis. What’s forensic audio analysis, you may ask? It’s “the scientific way of analysing audio recordings that may be needed in a courtroom or in some kind of official inquiry,” explains Professor Rob Maher of Montana State University, an expert in the...
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December 10, 2018 • 28 mins
Ah, Paris. Unmistakeable, beautiful Paris. Paris: a place so unique – so authentic, so essentially itself – that it is truly irreplaceable. The eighth and final instalment in our Sound of the Cities mini-series – a sonic exploration of our urban environments and their cultural soundscapes – visits the French capital. There we meet two composers, Yann Coppier and François Bonnet, who both spend a lot of time thinking about sound and...
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October 9, 2018 • 25 mins
In part seven of our Sound of the Cities mini-series – a sonic exploration of our urban environments and their cultural soundscapes – Sound Matters podcast travels to the Hollywood Hills. Peacefully perched up above the sprawling noise emitter that is Los Angeles, we grab a damn fine cup of coffee and sit down with legendary artist, musician and film maker David Lynch to chat about the infinite dynamism of sound, creativity and med...
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September 21, 2018 • 24 mins
Us humans preserve our experiences in recordings. And when we revisit these texts, images and sounds, it can feel like a small form of time travel. In part six of our Sound of the Cities mini-series – a sonic exploration of our urban environments and their cultural soundscapes – host Tim Hinman travels to Tokyo, digging up sound recordings made 20 years back, and meeting the artist and photographer Takashi Arai. Arai takes one long...
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August 30, 2018 • 32 mins
In part five of our Sound Of The Cities mini-series – a sonic exploration of our urban environments and their cultural soundscapes – we’re moving away from the noisy sensory overload of megacities. We’re still visiting a capital city, it’s just that this one is a bit on the smaller side: Reykjavik, capital of Iceland, population 337,780 (give or take). In this episode, Sound Matters meets the musician Kira Kira aka Kristín Björk Kr...
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July 19, 2018 • 28 mins
For millennia our hearing has acted as our early warning system. It worked well out in the relative silence of nature: a bird calling out against a predator; the snap of a twig in a deep forest, and so on. But what about in our noisy cities? In a way, this primal sensitivity to noise can turn against us in our industrial, urban soundscapes and cause low level stress, confusion and exhaustion. Our host, Tim Hinman dips his head into...
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June 22, 2018 • 22 mins
Can listening be a creative act? In the third instalment of our Sound Of The Cities series – a sonic exploration of our urban environments and their cultural soundscapes – Sound Matters podcast immerses itself into the hubbub of the Indian capital, New Delhi. Host Tim Hinman meets the artist, musician, DJ, record label boss, festival organiser and born-and-bred Delhiite, Ish, and speaks about the Delhi art and music scene, and how...
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April 20, 2018 • 27 mins
In the second instalment of our Sound Of The Cities series – a sonic exploration of our urban environments and their cultural soundscapes – Sound Matters podcast jumps into the deepest of the deep ends of art and culture: New York. Host Tim Hinman is joined by podcaster and artist, Jeff Emtman, whose show, Here Be Monsters is an influential aural institution in its own right. Jeff takes us on an epic day-long sonic adventure throu...
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March 19, 2018 • 23 mins
So many of us live in the hustle and bustle of cities – vibrant, lively but noisy and distracting soundscapes. How do we exist among this noise? How do we listen through it to the smaller sounds, the delicate and subtle sounds that bring us peace, joy, inspiration? Series three of Sound Matters kicks off an eight-part international journey – The Sound Of The Cities – starting at home in Copenhagen, Denmark. Host and writer Tim Hinm...
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December 8, 2017 • 29 mins
“Monday’s yellow, Tuesday’s brown, Wednesday’s blue, Thursday’s light brown… If you ask people where lemons are on a piano, they will all put their hands at the top of the keyboard…” That’s Nick Ryan, sound artist and composer – but what on Earth is he talking about? Well, sometimes people get all mixed up. Specifically, their senses are mixed. It’s called synesthesia – a perceptual phenomenon in us humans where we experience one s...
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October 20, 2017 • 31 mins
If you’re under thirty then you’ve probably listened to more music in a compressed digital format than anything else – and that’s fine, right? It’s never gotten in the way of the music that moves you. Well, actually, there are audiophiles out there obsessed with realistic, high fidelity sound reproduction, and they think otherwise. Wax cylinder, vinyl, 8-track tape, CD, minidisc and more: our love for music is unshakeable, but that...
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June 30, 2017 • 30 mins
Sounds behave very differently underwater than they do back on land – it’s a whole other kettle of fish down there you might say. What’s an earthquake sound like underwater? Do whales like music? What sounds make fishes’ hearts beat faster, and what do cod like to talk about? Our host Tim Hinman slips on his wetsuit and jumps into the deep end of our ocean soundscape. Featuring Norwegian artist and singer, Gry Bagøien and Dr Steve ...
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June 6, 2017 • 27 mins
“We bombard ourselves with sound and music… it’s everywhere.” So says musician, artist and nature recordist Chris Watson who has captured sounds for numerous wildlife TV shows, including Sir David Attenborough’s Planet Earth series on the BBC among many others. In this episode our ever-intrepid host Tim Hinman points his microphone at, well… microphones, speaking with Watson and sound artist Jana Winderen about our ever-fascinating...
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April 12, 2017 • 34 mins
Some sounds go back… way back. In this edition of Sound Matters, we travel to a time before music was music, when man-made sounds allowed us mere mortals to hear the voices of the gods – when the line between making music and making magic meant a whole lot more than just putting together your next party mix playlist. Host Tim Hinman takes us to meet musician and composer Barnaby Brown, who specialises in recreating sounds from long...
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March 17, 2017 • 28 mins
“I’ve spent a lot of time recently doing concerts for dogs… They’re the perfect audience.” So claimed musician, multimedia artist and film maker, Laurie Anderson when we interviewed her recently. And, if YouTube is anything to go by, millions of people agree with Laurie: “Funny Dog Singing Compilation”, “LOL Dogs That Sing” and “My Dog Sings With Beyonce” are just a few of seemingly infinite videos shot and posted online by us huma...
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January 27, 2017 • 33 mins
Outer space is a vacuum – it’s full of a whole lot of nothing – so it’s pretty quiet out there. Or is it? Sit back, strap yourself in and lift off into the great beyond. This episode of Sound Matters features Professor Tim O’Brien of Jodrell Bank Observatory in the UK and amateur radio satellite enthusiast Dave Rowntree (you might know him as the drummer in legendary Britpop band, Blur) looking at and listening to sounds from beyon...
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