SOUND BY ANDY MILES
{Also listen to voice and production samples}
From 2009 to 2019 I produced Transistor Radio, for most of its history the daily/weekly/monthly webcast of Transistor, a gallery, shop, performance and teaching space at 5224 N. Clark Street in Chicago.
In 1998 the author Jennifer Beth Cohen embarked on a fateful adventure, seeking love and livelihood in Moscow. She found both, if only fleetingly. What transpired over the course of a year would become the agonizing substance of her first book, the coming-of-age memoir Lying Together: My Russian Affair.
Cohen, a native New Yorker, returned to Manhattan in 1999 where she immersed herself in the painstaking work of recounting her personal and professional saga in the pages of a tell-all memoir. Terrace Books, an imprint of the University of Wisconsin Press, published the book in 2004.
On the eve of Lying Together’s commercial release last September, sound producer Andy Miles had a chance meeting with the author in a Washington, D.C. bookstore. He quickly recognized — in both the book and its first-time-published author — the compelling stuff of documentary and went to work on what would become (the looking for love part).
“Toronto: City in Transition” is an audio documentary that examines numerous public policy issues in an effort to (1) portray the city’s visible decline during the past 10 to 15 years, (2) determine the causes of that decline, (3) survey proposed remedies to combat that decline.
From there, the documentary chronicles the changing racial/ethnic complexion of the city and Toronto’s rapidly growing population, exploring the ways in which these issues relate – whether in fact or only senseless reaction – to the decline.
Andy Miles traveled to Toronto in early September 2002, staying in the Beaches neighborhood over a 10-day period. He interviewed numerous scholars, journalists, a best-selling author, municipal politicians, city planners, and the proverbial man and woman on the street. Returning home in mid-September, he recorded several more interviews by telephone from the production studios of WLUW-Chicago and WORT-Madison.
WORT Radio
In November 1996 I moved from Chicago to Madison, WI, in part to shore up my radio resume. WORT is a noncommercial, volunteer-run community radio station, 89.9 on the FM dial. While there I did some work in the promotions and music departments, produced and engineered the 60-minute morning talk show “The 8 O'Clock Buzz,” first for Friday host Jonathan Zarov and then for Monday host Linda Jameson, and hosted various nighttime indie rock shows, including an overnight stint and a monthly program in primetime that I continued to do even when I had moved back to Chicago in 2002. I finally left the station in May 2003 when I moved to Amsterdam (that commute would not have been possible).
It was a long time ago and the technology has definitely changed. For example, all of the radio promos below were produced on reel to reel, edited with a razor blade and wax pencil. The last of these tracks is post-college: one of the two commercial radio jobs I landed then. I left B95 within six months, having decided that commercial radio – as opposed to community and public radio – was not really my thing.
It was January and it seemed like an altogether appealing way to pass the time, to see as many shows as I could manage over the course of the year, and write about it. From the outset my plan was to combine concert and record reviews, artist sketches and interviews with observations drawn from my personal experience as a concertgoer. What I endeavored to do was write both objectively and subjectively, personally and impersonally, formally and informally, in a style that could feasibly be applied to any number of topics, but in this case rock music.
Over the course of 10 months (in November I moved away to Madison, Wisconsin), I managed to make it out to shows at least weekly, if not two, three, four times a week, often alone. I sometimes stood behind black-lipped teenagers in early-morning queues outside (chain) record stores that doubled as Ticketmaster service stations. Getting my name on guest lists always helped; with my day job as a suburban courier, I scarcely had the funds to finance such a venture.
MUSIC
Rayograph
Rayograph is the synthesizer and software project of Andy Miles. The first Rayograph recording, “Welcoming Country,” was made in late summer 2007. A full-length album, “Nested Forms,” followed in late 2009. The album was released digitally on November 4, 2010 with 22 instrumental tracks, two of which were not included on the original CD version of the album.
Miles programs synthesizer, percussion and field-sound samples in a little-known open-source sample-sequencing application called Leaf Drums, and sometimes plays an Alesis Micron synthesizer and electronic drum pads. He orchestrates the sounds, programmed and performed, into dense rhythmic and melodic collages, endeavoring to inject in the songs organic qualities that eschew the often-rigid confines of techno (of which he doesn’t consider himself an exponent). He likewise demonstrates no loyalty to a genre, electronic or otherwise, wandering from ‘80s-inflected synth pop to dusky cinematic ambience, sitar-drenched meditations, serene Eno-esque soundscapes, and more.
The band was formed in the fall of 2012, the night that Randi Russo, a recent transplant from New York, performed live at Transistor Chicago, the gallery/shop/performance space owned by drummer Andy Miles. Andy was so impressed by Randi’s solo set he offered to be her drummer and put the rest of a band together. Charlie Crane (Airline-X, Feature Flick) joined the following week on lead guitar. Eric Gannon was added on bass in 2013, and Mike Ganz replaced him in 2014.
Formed in the summer of 2008, Airline-X played their first gig in early 2009. After an almost two-year hiatus, the band re-formed in 2012, only to more or less break up again in 2015.
2015 personnel
Charlie Crane: electric guitar
Ramsen Isaac: electric guitar, synthesizer
Lauren Kurtz: vocals
Andy Miles: drums, percussion & samples; bass
The band in its final 2014 form had four members:
Ramsen Isaac: guitar, vocals, songwriting
Charlie Crane: lead guitar
Jon Monteverde: bass guitar (not pictured)
Andy Miles: drums