Craig Eley

Attention, Please! An interview with Sara McCrea Sara McCrae talks with Craig Eley about Attention Lab, a new podcast from the School of Attention.

Very few podcasts have grabbed my attention like Attention Lab. It's a 3-part series about reclaiming our attention in response to the multibillion dollar companies trying to harvest it. Read my interview with producer Sara McCrae today in the newsletter:

fieldnoise.com/attention-pl...

Field Noise Favorites: 2025 Craig recounts some of the best things that he listened to in 2025, including field recordings, audio documentaries, and albums.

If you need to escape somewhere in your headphones today, here's a list of audio documentaries, field recordings, and music that came out last year that I think can really take you places. These are some of my favorite listens of 2025.

fieldnoise.com/field-noise-...

On Foxes and Boxes: a conversation with Ged Adamson What is "natural" about listening to the natural world? An interview with children's book author and illustrator Ged Adamson.

In today's newsletter, I muse on the relationship between nature and culture in terms of how we listen to the world, thanks to a wonderful children's book where a fox finds a radio and then starts to appreciate the sounds of the environment.

Read / share / subscribe here—

Workflow: Local Transcription Transcribing audio files locally on a Mac using Whisper and some other terminal tricks.

I've been messing around with some Whisper-based transcription tools to make quick, free transcripts of audio files for a while now, and today I finally took the time to write up the workflow in my newsletter. If you want to nerd out on the command line, have at it!

Damn, I love Soft Cell. Discovering their weird and wonderful catalogue beyond their big hit completely rewired my brain in terms of what I thought "80s music" was or could be. Dave Ball was a synthesis and production genius.

New Work: Periodic Triumphs A short audio piece about an office building and the things inside it.

It's not just that I wrote a newsletter about the piece I made for @audioflux.bsky.social — it's that I also figured out how to include an image on the link down there ⬇️ even though the image is not in the post itself. Small wins! Or, if you will, periodic triumphs…

fieldnoise.com/new-work-per...

This, but for podcasts.

There is a LOT more to be said about what this means for public radio, and specifically Wisconsin Public Radio, but that's for another day. Today I'm choosing the be grateful that the staff found an institutional partner to house their archives:

americanarchive.org/special_coll...

Took some time in the newsletter this week to reflect back on the WPR radio show To the Best of Our Knowledge. It was the first radio job I ever had, and it changed my life.

fieldnoise.com/remembering-...

Field Mix - Volume 15

Also made a new playlist of vibey, moody songs for early fall...

open.spotify.com/playlist/3k9...

I'm getting my newsletter going again. It's going to be about sound and science and history and music. It will have recommendations, podcasts and otherwise. I'm self-hosting it because I hate Nazis and algorithmic feeds. If any of that speaks to you, let's jam:

fieldnoise.com/field-noise-...

In other words, it’s fine! It’s just fine! But it’s not a radical reimagining of the cultural life of the east side or whatever. I’m a Tone lover, this just felt like it was doing a lot of promotional work for a pretty small idea.

Yeahhhhh, but I think Tone and Madisonians can and should hold our cultural orgs and promotors to a higher standard than this. “Silent films with a live music element” is a remarkably unoriginal idea. And the fact that it’s free isn’t, like, a public service—it’s to entice people to come to a bar.

So, if I am reading this correctly, dude booked like 3 of the most well-known and screened films of the silent era, and…he has never seen them?! He “picked a few that sounded cool…” 🤦‍♂️

For all of its shortcomings, I think it is the best at seamlessly connecting local / downloaded files with streaming ones. I chuck all of my Bandcamp puchases in via the desktop app and then they sync to the cloud and end up on my phone.

Don't lose hope! I actually think Apple Music is pretty great. This happens to me from time to time; I think it's just years of old authorizations piling up. Just de-authorize all of them, and then authorize the machines you still use.

Today in retro technology / The Revenge of the 90s: the new Black Moth Super Rainbow album that came out today was released on vinyl, CD, and...MiniDisc.

Hey! Thrilled to share that my piece—about the Folkways record "Sounds of the Office"—is an @audioflux.bsky.social circuit select. Honored to be among this group of producers. In-person debut of the piece is on June 1st at @soundscene.bsky.social, and it will drop online a bit later. Stay tuned!

Also, congrats to Anelise on that PR!

Came back from a run, opened my phone, and saw this. This letter is everything: the joy of running, the hardships of high school, the fact that what we are talking about is kids playing sports. Trans women are women, trans runners are runners, trans kids are kids.

Hey! I'm thrilled to be among this group of producers, and I wouldn't be here without the help of my awesome friends and collaborators: @sepulchra.bsky.social, Theo Balcomb, and Marc Bianchi. If you want to hear these pieces (and you do!), there is a listening party in June — details in the thread.

Yes! Totally worth it. It’s my favorite EQ, but I have also worked with mixers and engineers much better than me, they always seem to have it in their signal chain as well. Feels like it’s close to an industry standard at this point.

We simply had to intentionally destroy the world’s strongest economy while dismantling our scientific and educational infrastructure to ensure that a team with a trans girl would never finish second place in the Mountain West volleyball standings again

So, just so I'm totally clear — Claire Rousay will be in the Cinematheque performing the score of THE BLOODY LADY?!?!

Song Exploder - Gracie Abrams Gracie Abrams breaks down her song "I love you, I'm sorry."

This week's Song Exploder is a great glimpse into the nature of songwriting and collaboration. Gracie Abrams and Audrey Hobert are co-writers, roommates, and childhood friends, and the pure *fun* they have making music together is adorable and contagious. Check it:

songexploder.net/gracie-abrams

Are You Ready to Be Heartbroken? by Lloyd Cole & The Commotions on Apple Music Song · 1984 · Duration 3:06

I have loved the Camera Obscura song, “Lloyd, I’m Ready to be Heartbroken,” since the moment I heard it, but just today I came across the song that it is obviously in conversation with: the 1984 Lloyd Cole song, “Are You Ready to be Heartbroken?” It’s great!

music.apple.com/us/album/are...

An iOS pop up saying that the item is not available in Apple Music.

Whoa, cool! But I’m getting an error on Apple Music, just FYI.