favorite audio drama #1: The Black Tapes

I got bored of listening to music on my morning walks. I was bitching about boredom and mundanity of this activity and my friend suggested podcasts. One of her friends is a booktuber and she had a podcast recommendation video. In that video, she talked about liking this show called the black tapes. I was like…okay, let me give it a shot. It sounds like my thing anyway – horror, paranormal, investigation, conspiracy theories, music, mathematics and the likes. And boy was I hooked.

The main protagonist is Alex Regan, a radio host, who starts the podcast. It starts innocently enough with investigation into paranormal or sort of unexplained phenomenon. She is driven woman, experienced and has this flaw with boundaries. Her journalistic integrity though pretty sharp and accurate, she doesn’t hesitate to make this boundary porous to push the story forward. Her explanation always is that her integrity is with the listeners. This gets into mild trust issues with few people who become her friends but they all get strained at some point because of this. This is a good dichotomy to the otherwise pristine character she has been given. And this makes her far more appealing to me than most other listeners, to be perfectly honest.

In the very first episode Alex finds that there is a reward of a million dollars set to those who would categorically prove that supernatural exists. And it’s set by Steand institute. Richard Strand.

Now Richard Strand is a story that’s best listened to on the podcast itself. There is a massive backstory, history and lore set up to why he is so into paranormal. All that aside he talks to Alex in the very first episode and we get to hear about the collection of VHS tapes Alex sees on his shelf that are in black casing.

The Black Tapes.

From one tape to another Alex finds herself exposed and open to a world she didn’t know existed. It becomes increasingly hard to differentiate what’s real and what’s brain conjuring images and slicing them up. As the series progresses, she gets deeper into the lore, fardeeper into global conspiracies and comes close to becoming a part of black tape collection herself. And amidst it all, Dr. Strand advises and sometimes even patronizes on all her theories as the expert on all things paranormal. He has debunked a lot of them, after all.

There are moments when it’s very hard to like Strand but as the series progresses, he grew on me. We understand the hesitation in accepting things at first glance or first listen or even first read. He is methodical, he researched and he questions everything and everyone. Every intent is questionable until it’s not. He develops a tentative friendship with Alex and grows to implicitly trust her. The ending for these two characters is not what I would have likes but whatever.

It’s quite an enjoyable series and the voice acting is pretty good. It takes off from the very first episode and is episodic in nature. It stands at 3 seasons as of now. There have been talks of making season 3 finale a mid-season finale so who know what the future beholds.

I hope one day we get to uncover more of this world. It was a pleasure listening to this. It’s always going to be dear to me as this is the very first podcast I listened to. I only followed it when it was in season 3 so I was pretty late tot his game.

Audio Drama…new name for old timey radio plays

About five years ago I started walking everyday and I started getting bored of listening to same music. My friend recommended audiobooks and for a year or so I was happy listening to them. A friend from online book club recommended a podcast called as “The Black Tapes” and told me how awesome it was. So I downloaded an app called as Podcast Addict and subscribed to the show.

I. Was. Hooked.

I gulped it down in few days and I wanted more. A brief research and I landed on reddit page that had good set of recommendations. Thus began my journey into podcasts or what now called as audiodrama.

I listen to them when I walk and when I do some work that dont require a lot of my attention. When I do chores, am almost always playing audio drama and now I play them before going to bed as well. It’s a different way of consuming media, literature and entertainment especially thriller/horror/paranormal which I learn towards.

I am continuously impressed with the way these audio drama have evolved. They have mutated out of their podcast like structure and have become more organized into immersive narrative structures. Like tv shows they tell a story in a serialized format with a full cast, sound effects and narration in some cases. Some shows are like miniseries while some span across seasons. They are mind bending thrillers, sometimes even like flash fiction like (each episode is like 10 minutes and the entire seasons will be 10 episodès), while some can go 100+ episodes with interconnected mytharchs, overarching storylines and intricate plots (like The Magnus Archives). Whatever is the case, there is a great variety offered in this format.

Today has been a very long day. I have been working since 7 in morning and it went on till 9 in evening. Having been in front of screen for so long, my mode of entertainment for the night cannot involve anymore stress for eyes thus reading and watching stuff goes out of window. So I am going to put on a audiodrama, make some soup and settle down for the night. A good podcast app will shut down based on your preferences and at this point my app know me well.

For anyone interested, audio drama I will be listening to – see below.