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The Spot: Musical Architecture

New Orleans Airlift (neworleansairlift.org)
Bate Bunda bangs on one of the buildings in New Orleans' Music Box Village.

This week on KALW's showcase for the best stories from public radio podcasts and independent radio producers...

The Self-Rattling House” from the podcast The Organist from McSweeney’s and KCRW, April 2017.

The Organist is an experimental arts-and-culture program edited by the award-winning, monthly magazine the Believer, published here in San Francisco by McSweeney's. 

The scope of the podcast reflects that of a print edition: its contributors take a thoughtful approach to pop culture, along with an irreverent attitude toward the highbrow. Episodes include reported stories, interviews, comic radio drama, reviews, and more. 

In this segment from The Organist, we tour a village in New Orleans that’s more of an instrumental organism than a neighborhood. To find out when Music Box Village is open, you can visit musicboxvillage.com, and you can subscribe to The Organist anywhere you listen to podcasts, including Apple Podcasts.

Sounds of Skateboarding” from the podcast Everything Sounds, January 2014.

We continue this smorgasbord of music made by unconventional instruments with a selection from the podcast Everything Sounds. Each episode from the show focuses on sounds you’ve never heard before, including how and why they’re made, sharing untold stories about sounds that you’ve heard time and time again. For example: skateboarding, a very visual activity for its participants and spectators, but the rhythm and noises it can create are also important to the sport and, to some artists, musical.  

Everything Sounds is hosted and produced by Craig Shank and George Drake Jr. See the “Sounds of Skateboarding” video and links to hear more of Wasaaga and Brad’s work at everythingsounds.org, which is also where you can hear more episodes of the show.

This week's episode featured music from: Black Moth Super Rainbow, Duke Ellington, The Shacks, and Quintron & Miss Pussycat.

If you have a suggestion for a podcast or an audio project we should feature, please drop us a line at thespot@kalw.org.

Tune in next week for another episode of The Spot, only on KALW San Francisco.