Chris Watson: Whispering in the leaves
February 27th, 2008 by Bobbie JohnsonPerhaps I’m in danger of overloading you with Chris Watson, but the sound recordist is already a firm favourite with the Speechification crew, thanks to his emphasis on creating radio that not only tells a story but also captures the sounds of life.
He popped up again this morning on Midweek, in a too-brief 8-minute interview where he gives a glimpse of how and why he works. Ostensibly he’s talking about a new exhibition about tropical rainforests he’s got on at the Sunderland Museum called Whispering in the Leaves, but along the way he manages to describe capturing the sound of glaciers moving, Mexican railways and vultures gnawing away at zebra carcasses on the Masai Mara.
Fascinating stuff. It’s about 23 and a half minutes into this stream, or you can listen to the MP3
(Incidentally, I’ve always wondered about Radio 4’s propensity to take the same show - a gentle series of interviews with three or four interesting people - and slap a different presenter and a different name on it. You’ve got Start the Week, Midweek, Woman’s Hour and In Our Time are all essentially mild variants of the same concept. I hope they name a new show “just-over-halfway-through-the-week” for continuity purposes.)
February 29th, 2008 at 12:25 am
I don’t know that I agree with you about that, Chris. When 99% of English-language radio seems to consist of minimal variations upon the theme of overpaid narcissistic prattler + play-list + CD deck (or said o.n.p. + tabloid “news” agenda, in the case of so-called talk stations), the R4 programmes you mention are all easily distinguishable in my view.
Start the Week: unique in that, despite being built essentially around publicity for current or forthcoming books/tv programmes/exhibitions, etc. the participants (and the presenter) do all seem to have been required to have read, viewed, visited each other’s productions — which adds enormously to the value of the discussion.
Midweek: suffers, in my view, from the weakness that the “guests” are there basically there only to discuss their own PR agenda. Ms Purves goes to often absurd lengths to demonstrate how, say, ballet dancing and crocodile hunting have a very great deal in common, but the typical “cast-list” of yachtsman/luvvie cum charity-worker/unusual entrepreneur tends very much, IMHO, to the yawnsome.
In Our Time: if your brain isn’t aching by the midpoint of the programme, then Melvyn hasn’t been whipping this week’s contributors hard enough! Superb and incomparable radio-for-the-mind.
Woman’s Hour: I disagree with your characterization of this programme, Chris. Although it frequently features extended interviews, this is essentially far more of an “informative magazine” than a discussion programme like the aforementioned three.
February 29th, 2008 at 12:42 am
Sorry, Steve, etc, for mis-addressing you as Chris!!
(My only excuse is that the page on which I came upon your article didn’t appear to have any “Home” link — and I leapt, over hastily, upon the first “first name” I saw…)
March 4th, 2008 at 5:23 pm
Fasinating dissection of those shows, Kevin.
Re contributor names, perhaps we need to make the post author clearer. This one was Bobbie.
Currently, on the line following the post title (”Chris Watson: Whispering in the leaves”) we have the date and contributor (”February 27th, 2008 by bobbie”).
We’re thinking about a serious redesign at the moment, so perhaps that’s a useful piece of feedback for that process. Thanks.