Arctic Reimagined
May 19th, 2010 by Steve Bowbrick
If you've heard Glenn Gould's 'The Idea of North', part of a trilogy of gorgeous programmes he made for CBC in the late Sixties and early Seventies, the themes of this lovely doc (also made for CBC) will be familiar (MP3). And it's got a familiar, melancholy tone too - must be something to do with the atmosphere up there in the high Arctic. There's a harder edge, though, because of the unavoidable evidence for rising temperatures. Subscribe to the excellent Nature Stories podcast, from PRX, for more like this from other North American public radio stations.
And I'm using Chris Wodskou's Arctic programme as an excuse to embed the Gould video, in which he talks about the layered sound of his radio docs and plays some music 'n' stuff. I've never seen it before and it's mindblowing. There's a short excerpt from The Idea of North, which will get you going, on the CBC Archives web site and you can buy it to download from Amazon. Do.