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Chapter 1: What is 'dark matter music' and why is it significant?
I think the most starstruck I've ever been going into an interview might have been when I was about to talk to Bob Wilson, the scientist who discovered the first direct evidence of the Big Bang. And then when I finally talked to him, he was just so deadpan about the whole thing.
I didn't realize at the time how big it was, but I do now.
The reason I was so in awe of Bob wasn't just because of his discovery. It was the way he made it. He listened to space using this huge 50-foot microwave antenna shaped like a horn. And he heard this fuzz. That fuzz is the cosmic microwave background. It's the leftover radiation from the Big Bang. And I got kind of obsessed with this antenna. I'd always figured space and sound don't really mix.
You know, space is a vacuum, so we can't hear any of it. But when I learned about the horn antenna, how it translated microwave radiation into stuff scientists could hear, I don't know, just the idea that you could listen to space and make a real discovery that helped solidify one of the most fundamental truths about the universe, that it had a beginning.
I haven't been able to stop thinking about it. And I kind of wanted to go see it for myself. But before I could, I talked to someone just as obsessed as I was, who made her own kind of pilgrimage.
When you read about something like the horn antenna, you think you're going to show up and there'll be security. And you don't imagine you just drive up and there it is, this incredible, gigantic sort of ear trumpet, open and free to anyone that wants to go and have a look. And when you say, okay, this picked up... The birth of the universe. Yeah, well, you believe it.
It has that kind of presence to it. How are there not lines of people wanting to see it?
B.D. Wolfe is a composer and a kind of artist, jack of all trades.
I typically work across science and design and health and technology and the environment.
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Chapter 2: How did Beatie Wolfe and Brian Eno transmit music into space?
still strong enough to hear in orbit if you had an antenna to pick it up. But by the time the signal got to the moon, it was completely enveloped by the sound of the cosmic microwave background.
It merging with the afterglow of the Big Bang, I think is beautiful as well because it's just this idea of us being so small and able to see so little of the bigger picture. We are just part of something so much bigger than us. And when you get a hit of that, instead of feeling small, it actually makes you feel pretty magnificent.
Beattie's first broadcast happened back in 2017. And then, a few months ago, she put out a new album called Liminal, which she made in collaboration with legendary musician Brian Eno. And the music felt almost otherworldly to her. She and Brian describe it as dark matter music. So they decided to fire up the horn antenna again and release their new album by transmitting it into space.
It's the kind of thing Beattie does all the time with her work. She releases an album in an anechoic chamber. She spearheads a research project studying the effects of music on people with dementia. She creates an audio visualization of 800,000 years of CO2 levels. But what really made me want to talk to her was the way she thinks about what music actually is.
How we have this way that we can connect with each other without language that we don't really understand. And she thinks about what having that power means for the universe and for us. I'm Noam Hassenfeld, and this is Unexplainable. So let's start with your most recent album, Liminal. It's the third in a series of albums you released last year with Brian Eno.
Yeah.
There was Luminal, there was Lateral, and now there's Liminal, which you and Brian called Dark Matter Music. What did you mean by Dark Matter Music?
I mean, it just seemed to say something that we couldn't really put into words about what it felt like to us. It felt to us like when we were making a lot of the pieces that became liminal, we were in this strange new land and it's that which is there that we can't perceive, that exists but beyond our powers of perception.
perception, this feeling of almost, you know, what is there, but we haven't tuned into it yet. For some reason, what connects in my mind with this idea is I went to see a series of Rothko paintings and there was a black piece, you know, one of his large black paintings, and I sat on the bench in front of it and then thought, OK, yeah, I'm going to go. And then I couldn't.
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Chapter 3: What inspired Beatie Wolfe's journey to the horn antenna?
Yeah. You know, we had luminol was dream music. That's what we used to describe it. Lateral was space music. Not space in terms of outer space, space in terms of landscape, in terms of a horizontal plane. But then luminol, dark matter, it's that which is there that we can't perceive. You know, William Blake talks about how human beings used to have enlarged numerous senses. I do feel that.
I think we are often missing so much of what's around us. And so this feeling of almost... you know, what is there, but we haven't tuned into it yet.
Yeah, you know that Blake quote? It's like, if the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is, infinite.
Yes, that's exactly it.
I love that.
Oh, me too. I mean, and liminal, I would say that there is nothing that's really fixed. Often within the tracks, there are There are a lot of elements that are changing, and quite subtly, that's, to me, what makes something feel alive.
Really thinking about how you make something feel like it still has the messiness of a human presence, where you don't know why, but it just feels like it's part of an environment as opposed to part of a music studio.
Yeah, I'd love to be able to dive into some of the specific songs on the album. And I guess I'm wondering, if I were to ask you which is the song that feels the most like Dark Matter to you, which track would you pick?
Well, the one that to me really feels like Dark Matter, whatever Dark Matter feels like, again, we're having to take great leaps of the imagination, is a track called Ringing Ocean. which has a sense of depth and breadth and spectrum to it.
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Chapter 4: What does the term 'Liminal' signify in Beatie's albums?
I'm Vivian Tu, your rich BFF, and on this episode of Net Worth and Chill, we're breaking down exactly how to survive wedding season without going broke. We're talking hidden costs you forgot to budget for, how much you actually need to spend on a gift, What do you think the point of music is?
What do you think music is for?
I think music, the point of music is to remind us of who we are, who we really are, and not who we think we are or we think we should be or society has told us to be. I think music cuts through all of that and it goes to something very deep inside of us, which is our... let's say, our true self, you know, and it bypasses all the other shit, really.
Yeah. You know, talking about reminding us of who we are, it makes me think of all the work you've done with music and dementia. Yeah. I wonder if you can just tell me a little bit about that.
So I came across Oliver Sacks, neurologist Oliver Sacks' musicophilia in 2014, I think, or earlier. And I was so struck by how music... activates almost the entire brain, you know, which is why when people have neurological conditions, it can bypass affected areas and, you know, hit somewhere else. You know, he made cases for its use across all these different conditions.
And at the time, I didn't particularly think, oh, I'm going to go off and do work in this area. It wasn't even remotely a in my mind and then I found out that my family members were coming into the early signs of dementia and then rapidly progressing.
So I thought, well, whenever I'm going to see that family member, I will take my guitar and I'll play some songs and maybe it will have a neutral or potentially positive effect. So I went to visit this relative in Portugal and I had asked, you know, the care home director, look, can I play some music to this loved one? And he said, yeah, but actually, would you mind playing to everyone?
So it was 40, 50 people and I was playing these new songs, you know, I'd written. So I was thinking, I mean, of course I'll do it, but it's probably not going to do any good. And, you know, before I started, most people were asleep. And it really suddenly felt like, oh.
I was looking around the room and people were sort of clapping and singing along at all stuff that they were hearing for the first time. And at the end of the performance, the director comes up and says, you know, the 10 years I've been here, this is the best I've ever seen the group. So I thought, well, you know, maybe I'll go ahead and do a project around this.
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Chapter 5: How does music impact our understanding of the universe?
You know, it just looks like a bunch of black paint, but there are all these different unseen layers that really make it what it is. And then you got people with dementia where it can be hard to know what they're taking in, but it seems like music can reach them. There's something happening under the surface that you can't see, that maybe scientists can't even describe.
When something is beyond description, you know, it's an experience. It's something that you know those times where you have been forever changed by something. You know, watching a film in the cinema or listening to a record or reading a book. And it's not that anything really has shifted outside of you. It's an internal shaping that will stay with you forever.
I think this is what ties Beattie's work together. An album of dark matter music being sent out into space and music reaching dementia patients. Even when there's so much we don't understand, even when we've forgotten a lot of what we used to know, we still have the capacity to be moved. And at the end of the day, I don't really think we know how.
That's why I love how she calls it dark matter music. You know, scientists have this thing where they call all kinds of things dark matter just to show how much we don't know. There's viral dark matter. There's nutritional dark matter. There's the dark matter of the ocean. And then there's music, which works in so many ways we still don't understand.
And that, I think, is what drew Beattie to music in the first place.
I write music because it's the closest feeling to magic that I have come across. A lot of the pieces of music that I've written, it feels as if something is just showing up and you're receiving it. And I often would record, you know, on my phone, just on the voice memos, feeling like, OK, there's a song here.
And I would listen back to it afterwards and write out the words that I'd sung pretty spontaneously. It's just feeling like you're part of something bigger.
All of a sudden, you're sitting somewhere and you feel as if you're the horn antenna and you're picking up cosmic microwave radiation and you're thinking, wait, there's something that's shown up, you know, and, oh, this feels interesting and I need to, I kind of need to capture it.
You can find Beattie and Brian's three most recent albums, Luminal, Lateral, and Liminal, on Apple Music, Spotify, or any other music places. Most of the music in this episode comes from their latest record, Liminal. The one you're listening to right now is one of my favorites. It's called Procession.
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