on the art of the podcast.
What is it that makes a good music podcast?
It’s something about the relationship between what was there and what is here, something about transport, something about the creation of feeling that results from this transposition.
After all, one meaning of casting is to throw. Another meaning is to form. And another, as if to suggest that something could come from nothing, is to contrive.
Listening to the Paste Magazine Culture Club or to the Daytrotter Sessions (technically a download not a podcast, but the experience is similar), one hears sound that was become sound that is.
There is something lost in the process, and yet, strangely, something gained. The sound flickers, casts shadows into shapes that were not in the original flame of noise. The transmission creates an energy than was not part of its original mission merely to recreate.
It’s better to listen to someone else listening than to listen yourself. That’s the difference between an Itunes track and a podcast. The re-presentation contains a present.