The Voice of the Desert

She howls, she hums, she whispers menacingly; she sings, she laughs, she quiets. The desert does what she cans to sustain life on her terms. This episode was inspired by a call that Aural Films put out for tracks about the desert. The desert landscape has been a popular theme in electronic music from the start with the debut of “Deserts” by Edgar Varese in 1954. The soundtrack for a movie that did not exist, was the first composition to combine electronic and orchestral music in the same piece. Ever since, electronic music artists from Brian Eno to Vangelis have been creating their own slow evolving soundtracks for these unique biomes. In the first hour, we’ll hear tracks from the RadioSpiral library: Jacob Newman: “Great Salt Desert” (Reflections and Diffusions0 ontol: “(Desert) Souls and Sand” (Auraline) Alpha Wave Movement: “Desert Light” (The Regions Between) Robert Carty: “In High Deserts” (Skyhearts) Robert Otto: “Desert Crossing” (Into the Unknown) Una Voce: “Gathering Desert Food” (Provenance) The Lovely Moon: “Driving Across the Desert” (Journeys to Peach & Happiness) In the second hour, your host will perform live as usual, but with a twist: a contribution from collaborator Al Baldwin makes this a track from The Third Course, a new collaborative project.