Sometime in the autumn of 2007, I was invited by a colleague to visit his studio in downtown Manhattan. He has a sort of sound studio/laboratory on the West side. I was interested to learn that this building was the old Bell Laboraties building. I, of course, knew Bell Labs as being the home to many modern marvels - television and the atomic bomb to name just two zingers.
As we snaked through the bowels of the building, through the labrynth of musty corridors now used by residents of the building for storage or subterranean creative quarters, I couldn't help shake the image of rooms filled with wires and hulking supercomputers designed to do simple mathematic equations that can now be done on a wristwatch.
I also thought it interesting that, though the building was decommissioned by Bell Labs, we were still heading into its belly to visit a sound laboratory of sorts. When we arrived, it was about as I had imagined it - a small, low ceilinged concrete bunker, with sound baffles hanging from the walls and ceilings, isolation booths for recording, electronic equipment, and sound recording gear. He proceeded to tell me some of the history of the building, about how it had been home of the Manhattan Project. The vacuum tube, phonograph, and radar were all developed here. The first images were transmitted wirelessly across the Hudson River between this building and another building in New Jersey. What started as the brainchild of Alexander Graham Bell had become the colossus responsible for everything from Johnny Carson to the Beatles to Hiroshima.
This gentleman was working on a project that involved binaural beats and their effect on human brainwaves. Binaural beats are electronically generated stereophonic tones that can only be heard within our minds, so to speak. Two notes are played, one in each ear, and the brain creates a third harmonic tone from the originals - a virtual note that is in effect capable of hypnotic power. He explained that many of the concepts being used in this project were, in fact, invented under that very roof by teams of technicians and theorists, long ago. It did seem a bit like a place that would be visited by spectres of the past, leaving their faint whispers as the tape rolled in the control room.
Then he told me the story of how stereophonic sound was first invented here, but the recordings were lost. The credit ultimately went to another scientist. That's how it was in those days, competition was fierce for first place. That's when he showed me the secret room.
It wasn't so much a secret room as a hidden closet, obscured by antiquated clutter. The room appeared to be a file room, with shelves of boxes of paper, racks of phonograph records, and dusty tape spools. He pointed to the piles of material and smiled. "I think it might be in here somewhere." And perhaps it still is. It seems during the renovations of the Bell Laboratories building, this back room in the far corner of the basement was overlooked. These archival materials sat undisturbed for possibly fifty years before my associate uncovered them.
As I sat and listened to the recent recordings he had made, my mind was rapt with the subtle pulsing tones. A chorus of synthetic instruments disguised the subliminal mechanisms at work. But I am certain that I could make out the faintest of whispers somewhere in the dark.
To listen to a sample of these recordings, go to:
www.azimuthtradewind.com/pathways.html
