New Radiolab = Haunting…

A new season of Radiolab recently started on WNYC and the first podcast is fairly amazing.

The description for the episode is:

Imagine that you’re a composer. Imagine getting this commission: “Please write us a song that will allow family members to face the death of a loved one…” Well, composer David Lang had to do just that when a hospital in Garches, France, asked him to write music for their morgue, or “Salle Des Departs.”

What do you do? What should death sound like?

After listening I of course went looking for David Lang’s music and downloaded what I could find. Most his stuff is fairly pleasant and interesting, but to be honest none of what I’ve heard so far is quite as moving as the piece he composed for this project. It wouldn’t surprise me if it was impossible to get your hands on, being short of actually working at Radiolab or the hospital in Garches. Something tells me this is going to be one of those “things” that I’ll be constantly looking for, but too lazy to make any real effort to find. Unfortunately, I have a lot of these.

Other Radiolab episode suggestions:

Musical Language
This Is Your Brain On Love (the last story…)
Memory And Forgetting

p.s. if you are “light in the stomach” I would not recommend google imaging the word “morgue”… yeesh.