The Sigla Blog

Delighted to hear the fantastic Sound Stories back on RTE Radio. I’d missed a couple over the last month, but through the magic of t’internet, you can listen back to them. Presented by Luke Clancy (who also has a fine blog over at The Loy), with Kevin Brew at the helm, it’s a quirky, never-know-what-you’ll-discover kind of show about all things aural. Last week’s programme, “Who Owns the Air?” will be of interest to music bloggers and DJs alike, as it covered a New York sampling conference called “Comedies of Fair Use” where a professor debates the issue of borrowing music with DJ Spooky and Hank Shockley, one of Public Enemy’s long time production collaborators. The programme also reveals where 50 Cent pinched the innocuous “It’s your birthday” line from “In The Club’ and chats to New York Professor Lawrence Ferrara, who has acted as a witness in sampling court cases, defending artists like the Beastie Boys and Notorious B.I.G..

The previous week’s show - “Broken Record” - looks at some of music’s most interesting flawed works, and includes a contribution from Si Schroeder, while composer David Pickvance discusses the appeal of “glitch” music in electronica.

Past shows/podcasts of Sound Stories can be found here (Season 1) and here (Season 2). In particular, from Season 2, check out “Sound and the Body”, which examines the history of the Stethascope and talks to a Tinnitus sufferer who formed his own musical quartet.