Lucky Dog Audio Post

There's lots of amazing photos in the Nasa on the Commons photo stream. This shot of Kennedy touring Blockhouse 34 at the Cape Canaveral Missile Test Annex is awesome. In this photo's comments several people have asked about the possible identity of the man in sunglasses seated behind Kennedy. Is it Dr Evil? When I first saw this shot, like a dork, I wondered, "Who's that microphone above the black telephone?" Perhaps an EV 644 Dynamic Cardiline®? I think we've got one of those around here...

TELEPHONEME | MK12 from MK12 on Vimeo.

Whoa. Now that is some truly superb sound design. I am talking earache-of-the-sublime good. Plus, to these ears, it sounds like a new take on sonic hauntology. Sure there are some glitch elements at play in the piece but the way in which the sound designers placed the VO from the Alphabet Conspiracy within an audio collage made up of sci-fi synth pads and dusty, mid-century educational film samples makes this soundtrack feel like it's being broadcast from a radio station run by ghosts. Which is totally rad. Of course the visuals give this short video that 1950s science class feel. And the font is definitely cool. But the audio! The audio here is killing me. Also, I really wish we had an Electronic Automatic Sound-Spectrograph Computing Digit Translator Playback Recognizer Machine. Do you think if we reverse engineered it, it could kick out a transcendental signifier or two?

Links:

TELEPHONEME

MK12

Alphabet Conspiracy

via @ILMsux

Check. It. Out. I finally got a chance to try out the Auto-Tune Chamber here at Lucky Dog Audio. From a voice talent's point of view, it's kind of scary inside the chamber. With the unnatural gloam created by the blacklight glow lights, the acrid, cold taste to the air from the emissions of the multi-angle fog machine, and the ridiculous cover charge once you are in the door, the whole experience evokes the ante-room from Saturday Night Fever's 2001 Odyssey discotheque crossed with the isolation tank from Altered States. But this is where you have to go in order to get that Auto-Tune sound, so into the chamber I went.

Agency: Third Degree Creative • Writer: Daniel Solis • Campaign: Buck the Norm: Win Your Books 2010

Last year, we wondered aloud about the Eurovision song contest and... well... nobody could help us. Thankfully, now, FINALLY, our questions have been answered. In the June 28th edition of the New Yorker, Anthony Lane explains Eurovision. Gods of songs be praised! Just it time too, because Eurovision 2010 has unleashed this demonic meme-ster. If you are reading this, consider yourself saxrolled.

Brahms and Ravel on vuvuzela via Alex Ross. Yo Scott, what are these dudes sayin? (I got "Hello.")

Check out our assist! Here's a new spot we helped produce for Go USA Bid: Bring the FIFA World Cup back to the United States in 2018/2022. We cast the voice talent for the spot, recorded the VO, and provided the client with a final audio mix that they, in turn, posted to picture. Basically we set up all the audio elements that accompany the picture. So, in soccer terms, we didn't score the goal BUT we did pass the ball to the player who in turn scored the goal. And that's cool too, isn't it? I mean, we don't get to tear off our shirts and run around the soccer field like Mr Goal Scorer but we still get to brag. A little. Yay us!

Today I spent the morning at Rose City Middle School for career day. A friend of mine who teaches art there asked me to come and talk to his class about audio work and advertising. I talked to three different groups of students. All of the groups wanted to know if we ever produced spots featuring kids. "As a matter of fact we do," I said and then I played them one of these awesome spots we produced for the Nashville Zoo two years ago. "Cool! I want to work for you," said one student. This then led us into a discussion about acting and how voice actors use their voices to evoke certain emotions. After class, the student who wanted to be a voice actor wrote her name, age, and a short description of her range as a voice actor on a piece of paper and handed it to me.

Lots of voice talent out there have blurby subtitles they use on their websites to promote themselves. You know, catchy little phrases that say something about their personality or style. One that immediately comes to mind is Bob Jump who is The Voice of America. Another is Caryn Clark who is the Hip Voice Chick. Jonathan Hanst has a good one, too, i say stuff for a living. You get the idea. Well, before this entry turns into an Andy Rooney observation piece, let me just say that this torn notebook paper contains my new favorite voice talent slogan:

It's been awhile since I've cooked up a book mixtape so let's let this national poetry month playlist I worked up for my biweekly radio show on KABF stand in for my usual book music. The relation between the poems and song selection is fairly arbitrary. In some cases there is an obvious connection, in others, not. Overall, I like the juxtapositions.

Playlist:

The Plague - Mountain Goats Loud Prayer - Lawrence Ferlinghetti Lust for Life - Girls Alien vs Predator - Michael Robbins Doctor (Five Discs Cover) - Atlas Sound On the Subject of Doctors - James Tate Tragedy - Shoes My Shoe - Charles Simic Paralyzed - Gang of Four Poem about People - Robert Pinsky The Crow - Dessa Felix the Crow - Kay Ryan Basic Space (diskJokke remix) - The xx Space Station - Tom Sleigh Behind the Bank - Oneohtrix Point Never My Life at Home During Banking Hours - David Berman Leaky Lifeboat (For Gregory Corso) - Sonic Youth Poem Rocket - Allen Ginsberg Sea Bells on Sunday - connect_icut/Sunday Morning - Wallace Stevens (mashup)

Allen Tate Hole - a recording of Allen Tate's Oct. 12, 1971 poetry reading at Boylston Hall, Harvard University rerecorded through the soundhole of a 1961 D28 Martin "Dreadnaught" Acoustic Guitar (tuned to open G).

The Anthologist mixtape

Here's some recent work we produced for Blam and M.B. Piland promoting the Google... oops... I mean, Topeka Chamber of Commerce.