e121 rumble – what killed dr decibel?

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(bell)

(humming to urban drones) 

This is Dr. Decibel. Your sonic superhero on the unseated ancestral territories of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Nations otherwise known as…  Well, I think you know where I am.

(plane passing by)

You have a problem here people. The low frequencies are excessive : traffic, industry, ventilation. Layers and layers of rumble and I hate rumble. 

Rumbleeeee is not something that I enjoy, so I’m going to use my superpowers today to reduce the amount of rumble in your city.

Ruuuuumble… (imitation of rumbling sounds)

And I’m gonna do that with my superpowers. 

Now, it’s hard to remove low frequencies from an environment where they’re everywhere, but I can do it and I’ll show you. You should be able to hear it. The tricky thing for me is that it takes a lot of energy to do that. So here we go. 

Mmmmmmmm (grunting)

Can you hear a difference? 

Let me try again 

Mmmmmmmm (grunting)

one more time, with all my might 

Rumble. remove yourselves. return. this. environment. to it’s. natural. state.

(fade out of low frequencies)

I don’t feel so well. I might have absorbed too many low frequencies…

*

In this episode I improvised a speech by a superhero, dr, decibel, who wants to remove some of the rumble in the city of Vancouver so that other sounds can emerge. 

This improvisation was recorded on March 7, 2023 at Stanley Park, Vancouver. 

I am grateful and accountable to the earth and the human labour that provided me with the privilege of producing this episode. (including all the toxic materials and extractive processes behind the computers, recorders, transportation and infrastructure that make this podcast possible).

My gesture of reciprocity for this episode is to the Wolf WIllow Institute for Systems Learning.