All Hail the Podcast
I forget frequently how much I enjoy listening to this podcast and then, every once in a while, I am taken with the urge to listen to it again, and remember that I love it. Funny how the brain works like that.
Anyway. Sounds.
Welcome to Night Vale is a podcast that is recorded in the style of a community radio show for a small town in the desert where some truly weird things happen. The episode I looked at for this assignment was only the second in the series, Glow Cloud, in which a large glowing cloud with telepathic abilities comes to town and dumps small, dead animals all over the place, tries to enslave everyone’s minds, and then disappears with no further explanations. It’s a strange show, but very entertaining if you like sci-fi/fantasy/paranormal things.
The show is narrated by a single man, Cecil, and clearly recorded in a studio, as there is no background noise that was not intentionally included. There is background music included through most of the show that varies based on what Cecil is talking about. There is a jazzy sort of music playing under the introduction to the episode, a kind of dissonant sounding track played under “weekly updates” about the town (which are all very strange, and include the warrant for a five-headed dragon’s arrest for insurance fraud) and some ominous sounding music played under the talk about the Glow Cloud. There are moments, too, where the music fades out completely, and there is nothing but the narration. Complete silence in the background. These creative choices with the background music (or lack thereof) highlight specific feelings or reactions the creators are trying to evoke from their audience.
There is a moment during the show where Cecil the reporter talks about the Glow Cloud (under it’s telepathic control (?)), and to emphasize the strangeness or otherness of this part of the show, there is an unsettling, echoing ringing noise playing underneath the narration, to make it known that something isn’t right in that moment. Weird as it is, it’s a very well done narrative moment.
Additionally, there is a “local weather” segment, the title of which is incredibly misleading. A repeated bit on each episode of the show, Cecil introduces the segment with the lead in, “And now, the weather,” and then a song plays. In this particular episode, the song was The Bus is Late by Satellite High, which is all about someone “waiting for the bus in the rain”. While the Glow Cloud in this episode does not rain in the traditional sense and there is no mention of a bus, this song (which will be stuck in my head for the rest of the week) was a very good choice for the episode, and highlighted the topic of it once again.
In relation to all of these, there is finally the strategic placement of brief pauses in the narration, brief moments of silence or just the sound of background music, depending on the timing of each one. Each pause is placed at a specific time so as to give the listener a moment to absorb what has just been said, when it is something that really wants to be heard.
All in all, the choices with sounds or lack thereof in this episode are obviously well planned out, and carefully done so as to make the episode even better than it would have been without them.
And, because each Medium post should have a picture, and I’m thinking about clouds now, here is a picture I took from somewhere over what I’m pretty sure was the Swiss Alps, in which you can see some clouds:
