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Bobby's Snacks Vol. 20: There Ain't Much of This Left
Bob Raymonda
June 02, 2024
Happy #AudioDramaSunday Pals!
Wow. Last week was a whirlwind because of family visits, shows, and vacations to Canada, but this week was a whirlwind because I was on a productivity sprint. I dialogue edited our upcoming Forgive Me! crossover episode with The Secrets of St. Kilda, I wrote the first draft of Forgive Me! episode 4.02: Going Away to College, released a collaboration with Apollyon, announced an upcoming collaboration with Jack Marone for The Amelia Project season 5 part 3, finished taking notes on the first dialogue pass of Windfall season 2, wrote a second draft of my story for the upcoming Greater Boston short fiction collection, listened to more than ever, and even had a chance to interview the incredible team behind Andas Presents (more on that below!!).
On top of all that, I still made time to celebrate Mike Andronico the singer/guitarist of my band Ghost Tour’s birthday alongside another friend I haven’t seen in ages, watch my nephew kill it in his Championship travel baseball team, and (in about an hour and a half) I’m about to go lounge in this beautiful weather around the pool. Speaking of pools, y’all should listen to this absolutely ridiculous single with production by my brother Adam Raymonda, including our friend Nick Stag who just guested on Forgive Me!, and Kevin Alexander who has provided original music for our podcasts for years now.
On that summery note, let’s get to it, shall we?
I’ve been sleeping on this show for a while, but it came into my life at the perfect point in time. Last Sunday, not long after my last newsletter, I started the long drive home from Montreal, and about halfway through (once it was my turn to stop being passenger princess), I started this show from the top and WOW was I immediately dragged right in. Over the course of that drive, and the rest of this week, I was transported into a world of time shenanigans, international espionage, talking snakes, killer original music, and a whole lot of requited sapphic love. It’s an incredibly horny, wildly inventive, and utterly punk rock entry in our medium and I’m begging you to RUN to listen to it. I can’t wait to dig deeper into Wolf at the Door’s back catalog.
Abby is at the end of her god damn rope, and she isn’t waiting around any more for answers. She’s determined that she’s making the best choices possible for herself in this moment, by no longer waiting around to meet up with Harry, and instead get away from it all. And just when we think that her hope for clear cut answers is all but dashed, who comes along by the erstwhile Birdie, ready to finally come close to revealing what is what.
When Faith McQuinn offered me the chance to write a story set in this series, and present a view of what life was like during the original AVS outbreak 30 years before it takes place, I jumped at it. Not only because I have an immense respect for her as a storyteller, or that it’d be a fresh change for me after so much slice-of-life-over-genre writing these past few years, but mainly it was because it gave me a chance to cast Marcus Xavier Stewart again. Marcus is one of my oldest friends from undergrad, plays Argus on Windfall, and is one of the most powerful actors I’ve ever met in my entire life. The story behind this script is very much inspired by them, and it shines through in the final product. David S. Dear was the perfect cast partner to play against them here, and I can’t wait to come up with another excuse to direct these two incredible people at the same time. It’d mean a lot to me if you’d check it out.
Things are heating up on Stephanie Elie’s alien body snatching drama, as the real Larsen wakes up under lock and key, and the fake Larsen lets the cracks begin to show. Hilariously, only her young son, Daniel, has any idea that something is afoot, not because Alpha 8 is a particularly bad copy of his mother, but that she’s acting a bit too relaxed about him cleaning up around the house. We also get an incredibly charming moment here, which was later released as its own bonus content, as we hear Daniel demoing a rap song in his room as the alien invader is just on the other side of his house.
We’re closer to the end than ever now, which means shit is going absolutely bananas for everyone involved with the destruction of the bank and the fall of the Trust. The true highlight of any episode of this show, for me, aside from the visceral visuals and gripping drama, are the tiny moments of the narrators’ personality shining through. When they break the fourth wall and titter with glee as a woman is shorn clean in half while free-falling through the sky. It’s abrasive, it’s jarring, and it’s why I’m convinced this is one of the most compelling shows I’ve ever heard.
Everyone in the town of Beaverton is so excessively polite, and so excessively Canadian, that it’s easy to write them all off as red herrings in this show’s titular murder. But the more that Chieficer Dougie digs into the goings on about town among his friends and neighbors, the more he realized that something fishy really has been afoot. The show continues to be a delight, and I can’t wait to see where it goes next!
God dammit, leave it up to this team to send me into tears during a freakin’ bonus episode. Seriously, this call between Graham/Joshua and Talia after their recent brush with a dangerous, violent extremist was brutal. We get to see Graham in full damage control, I have my shit together dad mode, while Joshua respectfully allows himself to simmer with rage beneath the surface. Talia questions what the future looks like for them, and how it’s even possible for her to have a relationship with just her father anymore… which he then admits is becoming exceedingly less so. Such great stuff, and has me even more excited for us all to hear episode 5 next week!
We came in real under the wire this month with our bonus episode, Confessions by Usher Part II, releasing it in the late morning on Friday. And as I mentioned on social media that day, it’s already less than topical, as it was originally written to come out in time with Usher’s 2024 Super Bowl Halftime Show performance, I’m still so glad we did it. Jack has been wanting to do an episode as his character Steve, told exclusively through Usher lyrics for about as long as we’ve been making the show, and with the absolutely incredible slow jams that Adam, plus Casey’s utter commitment to the bit as Father Ben, I think we’ve really pulled off something special.
Things are coming to a head in Night Vale, with the re-ascendance of Mother Lauren of the Church of the Smiling God, the feral yet righteous fury of young Kevin (the Boy who holds a knife). Residents of the town soon take up arms against each other both because of and against her growing influence, and the day is once again saved by the cooperation of Tamika Flynn and our new trio of avenging middle schoolers. Fantastic stuff as always, especially because it meant that we got a cameo from the always wonderful Symphony Sanders.
Emmeline watched a group of believers put on a play describing the origins of the Church of Unitology, only to slowly discover that there are many sects of the church… and they don’t all necessarily get along. I particularly loved the unsettling quality of the play at the beginning, it was simultaneously an obvious bit of cult rearing stagecraft, while also sounding exceedingly innocent in its presentation. Shaky alliances are made while some answers lead to even bigger questions about Ayuba’s part in this world… and what horrifying things are inevitably about to become of it.
I’m still two episodes behind this show, and I need to go back to the prequel New Years Day special, but I did catch up to one more this week. What always strikes me about this show is about how calmly all of its cast members are able to describe some of the most terrifying experiences I’ve ever heard. A horde of fellow xenobiologists and xenoarchaeologists moving as one, pounding on the walls, trying to shatter their bodies in order to meet you, all while screaming for you to stay as far away as possible? It simply could not have been me. I’m so freaking curious about the architects of these depths on the planet Proxima, what would cause them to do such a thing? And what, pray tell, have they left behind that’s beginning to take control of the humans exploring them?
When you have a show like Temujin under your belts, you could easily coast on a genre that you know works for you. The Andas Productions folks absolutely blew us away back in early 2020 with their lush historical fiction love story between Ghengis Khan and one of his childhood best friends. They could have stuck to their perceived lane and found another piece of untold history to explore, but instead, they’ve created an anthology feed that allows them to take wild swings into the unknown. Sayang is an absolutely brilliant solarpunk story that, while standing alone on its own 30-minute feet, begs one to wonder what happens next. That’s why I knew I needed to reach out to this team to speak more about it for my next creator spotlight:
Sayang was a wonderful sci-fi departure for Andas Productions in the audio sphere, after making a name for yourselves in historical fiction with your landmark series Temujin. How did it feel to be working on something that was so playfully hopepunk?
ROSHAN SINGH (Andas Productions’ Producer): Thank you for the kind words! This is something we've discussed a lot as a team, especially after Temujin's warm reception. We realized that a path was open for us to double down on Asian historical fiction, but that didn't feel honest to what led us to Temujin in the first place. To be specific: we were led by our love of the story, rather than an obligation to its genre. Everyone on this team loves a broad range of genre storytelling — which includes historical epics, yes...but also fantasy, sci-fi, and certainly hopepunk. I’m grateful we had this chance to work with show creators Nick Chan and Renee Yeong to play with this specific genre — and, in the process, expand preconceptions of what an "Andas show" sounds like. We're always going to go off of the love of a great story, and the hope that listeners will enjoy them as much as we do!
One of my favorite aspects of the script was Eko's relationship with the world around him, as the script progressed. Both with the tigers and the greater forest. What were some of the team's inspirations in crafting a story that relies so deeply on the advancement of technology and the inevitability of nature?
NICHOLAS CHAN (Co-Creator and Actor in Sayang): It’s wonderful to hear that that was something that you enjoyed! I feel like in science fiction, there is oftentimes synonymy between the words “technology” and “dystopia” as if the only way forward, technologically, is one that necessitates social injustice or an exploitative relationship with the environment. That sense of hopelessness (and helplessness) about the future was something that I wanted to challenge in some way with my writing. As the story was gestating, I came upon articles that explained the phenomenon of mycelial networks. I read about how nutrients flow between trees through said networks and was floored at how cooperative and unified the ecosystem—nature—had the potential to be. I thought about how humanity, though it sometimes believes otherwise, is a part of that natural world. And I wondered what that sense of unity and togetherness might look like if it was translated into the human experience, with technology playing an assistive instead of destructive role in that translation. So the idea of the bio-amp was born, and from it came a story that could have been about nothing other than the ideas of nature and humankind, connection and isolation, technology and hope.
Every aspect of the show is firing on all cylinders, from the casting, to the direction, to the performances, and the action and sound design. Can you tell us more about the team you've assembled to craft this beautiful story?
RENEE YEONG (Co-Creator and Director of Sayang): When I read Nick’s short story for the first time, I already knew it would work for audio. I was very excited about the potential to create a new understanding of how Nature communicates with itself beyond the usual birds, wind, river sounds. We wanted to capture the unknowable and intangible grandeur and majesty of Nature and we realised that no literal diegetic sound can do that. But music can. A tall order for any sound designer but we knew we found it in Nathaniel (Nat). Even though Nick and I created the story, Nat elevated it and brought his own sonic vision to the world that breathed life into the forest. We can say in words what we wanted but he turned that into beautiful sound. Shrey (Bhargava) playing both Ajish and Kahlia (the tiger) was also an experiment that paid off so poetically. No available sample we tried had the level of expressiveness that Kahlia required, and so when we asked Shrey if he wanted to give voicing her a try, he jumped into it with no hesitation. Through some sound design magic on Nat's end, every growl you hear in Sayang is from Shrey! All in all, this isn’t Nick’s and my first collaboration but it’s our first audio project and I believe all the work we’ve done prior to this translated into a single clear vision that we couldn’t have achieved without our lean and extremely collaborative team!
RS: I could gush for ages about how highly I think of Renee's directing on this — both in the booth and as a team leader — but her work in that sense really does speak for itself. This was such a creatively energized, kind, and talented group of creatives she found and conducted. I'd also second her compliments of Nathanial Mah, whose imaginative and collaborative prowess is very much the heart of the Andas "sound". There isn't high enough praise for what he pulled off here. It's also always such a privilege to work with our artist Isabel Fang, whose ambition and meticulousness never ceases to amaze! I'd also throw in a note of awe and gratitude towards fellow producer Scott Lee Chua, who I should note, almost single-handedly managed to legally incorporate the company alongside pulling together a great deal of necessary operational work to bring this show to the finish line — including his top-of-the-line transcript work. This was a joy from start to finish on our end.
With the launch of the Andas Presents feed, you're challenging yourself to put out standalone works, beginning with the lyrical micro-poem Fever Dream, and continuing with Sayang this week. That said, I can't help but say it felt like there was a much larger world to be had with this one. Are there any possible hopes that the episode could lead to a full season about Eko and the other Wardens of the Bornean Forest?:
RY: I definitely don’t think it’s out of the question. If you read the short story (which is available and linked in the episode!) you’ll realize that we’ve only scratched the surface of this extremely rich and dense world that Nick has created. Now that Eko has finally found community (without spoiling too much of the story), what is he going to do next? What’s been happening while Eko’s been isolating himself in his grove? Is it too late to save the rest of the Bornean forest? And are there other parts of Nature we can explore sonically? The fungal mycelium for example? How differently does that sound from the trees? We don’t have a sequel to this yet because Nick and I have recently started working on a new and completely different sci-fi story adapted from one of Nick’s screenplays.
SCOTT LEE CHUA (Andas Productions’ Producer): And that’s precisely why Andas Presents exists: to serve as an incubator for experimental audio from underrepresented creators, without the pressure of having to sustain a whole show. That lets us do riskier things like adapt a poem with Fever Dream, or push the boundaries of nonverbal worldbuilding and storytelling with Sayang. We’re committed to the Andas Presents project in the long term, and can’t wait to see what comes of it next.
Do you have any more hints for what kinds of stories we can expect from your team in the future?
RS: Andas is definitely a "slow and steady" type of team, but we have completed scripts for a super cool limited series that I really can't wait for people to hear. I'm not sure how much more I can say at the moment, but I suspect we'll continue to keep people guessing with our genres in the near future!
NC: As Renee mentioned, we do also have another story baking in the oven! We’re working on another science fiction piece that is slightly more ambitious in terms of its scope—it’s a series this time, but we’re moving away from the natural world and focusing a little bit more on the human condition. It follows a surgeon who wipes the memories of criminals away and implants constructed personalities in their stead, whose entire world gets upended when a man voluntarily comes into her clinic looking to forget the death of his wife. The story that unfolds is one that deals with memory, grief, identity and (surprise, surprise!) hope!
BONUS SNACK
Graphic memoir is one of my favorite artforms. Blankets, Persepolis, and Fun Home are core texts for me, so when I read about Kate Beaton’s new book for Drawn & Quarterly, I knew it would be right up my alley. I’d been wanting to pick it up all year but the distributor my Local Comic Book Shop buys from didn’t have it in stock, so when I knew I’d be in Montreal, I knew it’d be the perfect time to stop into the imprint’s headquarters and pick it up. This is a messy, beautiful book about being young and alone and isolated and among people that are feeling the same, who can show you both cruelty and kindness in the same breath.
But the important part of this examination of hard labor as a young woman in a camp where men outnumber her 50 to 1 is that that cruelty they showed her isn’t coming from just from bad apples, but instead from anyone you know who’s chosen to live a life under such conditions. It doesn’t forgive or forget the pain that Beaton experienced, but it doesn’t shy away from the pain everyone affected by that kind of lifestyle goes through. It’s messy, and human, and beautiful. And absolutely worth a read.