HBM143: Laughing Rats and Dawn Rituals

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Image by Jeff Emtman. Photo of sage grouse by Bob Wick of the Bureau of Land Management. Orange sky elements are the spectrogram of the sound of the mouse courtship call heard in this episode.

Image by Jeff Emtman. Photo of sage grouse by Bob Wick of the Bureau of Land Management. Orange sky elements are the spectrogram of the sound of the mouse courtship call heard in this episode.

 

Animals sometimes make noises that would be impossible to place without context.  In this episode, three types of animal vocalizations—described by the people who recorded them. 

The monkey who lost their mother. Photo by Stephanie Foden.

Ashley Ahearn: Journalist and producer of Grouse, from Birdnote and Boise State Public Radio

Joel Balsam: Journalist and producer of the upcoming podcast Parallel Lives.  Joel co-created a photo essay for ESPN about the “pororoca”, an Amazonian wave chased each year by surfers. 

Kevin Coffey, Ph.D.: Co-creator of DeepSqueak and researcher at VA Puget Sound and the University of Washington.  Kevin co-authored the paper DeepSqueak: a deep learning-based system for detection and analysis of ultrasonic vocalizations in Nature’s Neuropsychopharmacology journal. 

Also heard: calls of the Indies Short Tailed Cricket (Anurogryllus celerinictus), which may be the perpetrator of the so-called “sonic attacks” recently reported in Cuba.  Sound sent in by HBM listener Isaul in Puerto Rico.  

Producer: Jeff Emtman
Music: The Black Spot

 
Chas Co - Logo.jpg

Sponsor: Chas Co

Chas Co takes care of cats and dogs in Brooklyn (especially in Prospect Lefferts Gardens, Bed Stuy and surrounding neighborhoods). 

Chas Co welcomes pets with special behavioral and medical needs, including those that other services have turned away.  They offer dog walking, cat visiting, and custom care arrangements too. 

Visit Chasco.nyc

Look, it’s Kane!

HBM099: Spell for the Repulsion of Astral Vampires

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👆 Video version 👆 👇 Audio only version 👇

 

There’s currently an invisible, supernatural pandemic affecting the world, or so claims HBM host Jeff Emtman.  What else could explain the wide-ranging malaise of our current times? He thinks that the most logical conclusion is that astral energy vampires are draining humans of their lifeforce en masse.  Jeff’s never encountered one of these beasts, but that’s probably because he’s developed an elaborate spell to trap them in an alternate timeline.  In this video episode of Here Be Monsters, Jeff shares his special spell of repulsion.

Content Note:
Stylized blood and flashing images

Ingredients: 

A note from Jeff on the creation of this episode:

I spent my teenage years listening to Coast To Coast AM each night from 10PM until I fell asleep.  It’s a 4 hour nightly show about the supernatural that exists in a world of increased potential for the unusual.  Guests, callers and hosts are so densely packed with stories of the strange that eventually what used to seem ludicrous becomes possible, and what used to seem possible seems likely.   

Like many, I was deeply saddened to hear of Art Bell’s recent death.  Bell was the original host of Coast To Coast.  While I grew up in the George Noory era, Bell would still host most weekends.  

But on further reflection of my years dedicated to this program, I came away conflicted.  It is truly an amazing feeling to have one’s world blown open on a nightly basis by some new ‘truth’ revealed, it’s also a format that often peddles in fear of the unknown.   It’s a fear that I internalized, hard. Now nearing 30, I’ve likely cumulative years of my life in fear of evils that don’t actually exist. And of the evils that do exist, I fall into nearly every demographic group that statistically protects me from them.  

If I were a sociologist, I’d study whether there’s inverse correlation between the amount of generalized fear a person feels and how much danger that they actually live in.  I have a hypothesis about misplaced fears and their relationship to the supernatural, but I am no sociologist.

So in this episode, I take a fanciful view on the enemies of the astral plane.  The astral plane is a favorite location of Coast To Coast, probably because its inherent indefinability means that just about anything goes.  But with that being said, please don’t bathe in blood, or electrocute yourself.

Producer: Jeff Emtman
Editor: Bethany Denton
Music: The Black Spot, Serocell, The Other Stars

This episode features illustrations by Fortunio Liceti from the 17th century.  Fortunio did not believe his subjects to be hideous, as he considered deformity to be the intersection of nature and art.  

👇 Video stills 👇

 

HBM093: The Brain Scoop

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Divya Anantharaman’s brain scoop.

 

In school, Divya Anantharaman used to get teased for having long skinny fingers like ET.  But now she sees them as valuable asset for the intricate work she does.  Divya runs Friends Forever Taxidermy in Brooklyn, New York.  

Content Note:
Fleshy sounds

In this episode Divya carries a recorder with her while as she slowly disassembles a deceased pet parrot: snipping joints, scooping brains, removing eyes, separating the skin from the body. Birds’ skin is very thin—Divya likens the peeling to removing a delicate silk stocking.

We found out about Divya through Erika Harada, another skilled artist in the Brooklyn taxidermy scene.

Producer: Jeff Emtman
Editor: Bethany Denton
Music: Serocell (new album out!) and Phantom Fauna

 

Divya Anantharaman with a deceased Himalayan pheasant.

wet-slop-plop.wav (Among Other Sounds)

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b012.jpg
 

There are about 10,000 files in the Here Be Monsters sound library.   HBM producer Jeff Emtman has been recording, synthesizing and downloading them since way back before this show started.  And of these thousands of sounds, there’s a tiny subset of them that just keep winding up on podcast episodes.

On this interstitial episode, Jeff plays back some of these heavily-used sounds and asks whether they occur because of an inherent goodness, a force of habit, or some kind of weird nostalgia he feels for the early days of the podcast. 

The site Jeff often downloads sound from is FreeSound.org (see Jeff’s download history).  A big thank you to the many recordists there who volunteer their work to the public domain, especially Felix Blume, a sound artist and sound engineer who is responsible for many of the site’s best recordings.

 

HBM049: Sam's Japan Tapes

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Sam Parker in Japan.

Sam Parker in Japan.

 

When Sam Parker went to Japan to celebrate his mother's 60th birthday, he brought along a handheld audio recorder.  For the next few weeks, he recorded every sound that he could find, attempting to capture as many audio snapshots of Japan as possible. 

Sam doesn't really take pictures.  Without his glasses he's legally blind twice over.  So, to remember and share his trip, he created five beautiful audio postcards.

On this episode, Sam Parker and Jeff Emtman discuss the merits of deep listening and whether it's possible for a sound to be truly ugly.   Sam also shares three of his audio postcards. 

You can download all of Sam's postcards at observance.bandcamp.com (also embedded below).

Sam and Jeff met in college while working at KUGS-fm, a student operated station in Bellingham, Washington.  Sam taught Jeff how to listen closely.  

Music: Sam and Jeff made all the music on this episode using a guitar and a synthesizer, respectively.

 

Photos Courtesy David Parker and Juliana de Groot.

This episode contains postcards 1, 3, and 2 (in that order).  Here are Sam's liner notes:

Postcard 1 (begins 08:30)

My dad being a smart-ass on top of Mount Omuro, Izu Peninsula.

Old-school drone at the Meiji Shrine gift shop.

Crowds at the Osaka aquarium

Samurai re-enactment at Himeji Castle.

A private onsen in the town of Ito.

Mystery music coming from out of the woods at Yoyogi Park + my mom explaining directions for purifying yourself pre-shrine.

Birdsong from Miyajima, one of the most serene places I have ever been to.  You should go.

Postcard 3 (begins 11:40)

A television playing an old Donald Duck cartoon in Shimokitazawa.

Lunch-time rush hour at Shibuya station - each beep is a person going through the gate.

A bucolic little tune being piped through speakers in a light-post.

The performance artist Morimura Yasumasa re-enacting the final words of author Yukio Mishima.

Windchimes at Daisho-in temple, which was maybe the most beautiful place I’ve ever been to in my life, no hyperbole. 

Postcard 2 (begins 15:00)

An ATM transaction in Harajuku

Music in the lobby of a hostel in Miyajima

The best laugh I heard all trip, Narita airport.

An anti-militarization/nuclear warfare protest in Osaka. The current Prime Minister (Shinzo Abe) is a hawk and has authorized an expansion of US military bases in Okinawa.

While in Miyajima, I walked by a building and someone had left a portable CD player with a speaker on a staircase. It was playing this song on repeat. This was pretty typical of Miyajima. There are also some wind chimes playing very low in certain places. Maybe you can hear them?

 

HBM023: The Near Destruction of Rey Jaguar [Extended Cut]

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Photo by Jeff Emtman

Photo by Jeff Emtman

 

For lucha libre wrestlers, masks are everything. They wear them in the ring, they wear them to the grocery store, they wear them any time they appear in public. No one knows what face lies under that mask, so it makes sense that de-masking a Luchadore or Luchadora is highest taboo in the sport.

In this episode, we travel to Seattle’s South Park neighborhood for Lucha Libre In The Park, a free wrestling event put on by Lucha Libre Volcanica. Costumes, yelling kids, exquisite masks, cross-dressing, motorcycles, bad victory speeches--everything you would expect, and one thing that no one saw coming.

Check out the crazy photos from that night right here

This piece’s shortened form (6 minutes) was entered as a submission in KCRW’s 24-Hour Radio Race. Listen to the original.

And also listen to the other entries!

Music from: Lucky Dragons ||| The Black Spot

Here Be Monsters is now a proud member of the Mule Radio Syndicate, which distributes some other really great podcasts. Check them out at MuleRadio.net.

Hey! Review HBM on iTunes!