Sounds Like Radio Episode 04
They went outside the building, where it became more obvious that the noise was coming from the house on the right.
They were just peering in through its open front door when the good-looking man Cesca had seen earlier walked up its basement stairs to street level.
Kevin explained that the end of the world was nigh as a result of the noise.
He went into detail – low frequency interference, concrete stress points, filtering challenges with his equalisation unit.
The gorgeous man didn’t seem in the least fazed.
“Man, I’m sorry,” he said once Kevin had finished.
“And thanks for the info on radio and all that.” He grinned.
“I’m Bill, by the way.”
Bill explained that he had just that day started work on soundproofing a room.
“The guys who live here have a son,” he said, gesturing with a thumb back to the house.
“He’s fifteen and they’d do anything for him, I guess. He plays the drums.
“He says it’s all that’s keeping him calm with his exams, and pressure from social media, and stress from being a kid.”
Bill grinned.
“I didn’t like exams myself but nobody built me a space to drum in.”
“I suppose you have to work,” Cesca said.
Bill shrugged.
“I suppose I do. Though I’d rather be swimming.” He looked at them both.
“Do you like swimming? I like the reservoir at Upper Bitell. It’s outdoor.”
Cesca thought that she probably did like outdoor swimming, in the right company.
“We need a timetable,” Kevin said. “We have to know when we can record!”
“Record?” Bill said. “Like music? Tracks? Great.”
“Well, radio. We produce speech, mainly,” Cesca said.
“We have to hammer something out,” Kevin said, his voice rising in pitch. “A schedule, at the very least.”
“Hammer. I see what you did there.” Bill chuckled.
Kevin remained stony-faced.
“We will hammer out a schedule, man,” Bill said.
“But for now I’ll just be downing tools and going to that pretty good café I found around the corner.
“Anyone coming?”
Kev looked at Bill as though he was insane.
“I’ll be going back to work,” he said. “We are behind.”
“But there’s always room for a trip to the café,” Bill said. “Early lunch?”
“I’ll come,” Cesca said without thinking. She had a mountain of work.
“Great.” Bill smiled.
Kevin’s mouth fell open. Cesca decided that this was the time to introduce the idea of Gerry.
With Kevin, it was often best to kill two birds with one stone.
“Call in the main studio on your way back,” she said, “and say hi to Gerry, our new apprentice.
“She’s marvellous. She’s tidying all the cables!”
Gerry was certain that she was going to love Sounds Like Radio.
The council had had more than its fair share of fusspots and bullies, and truckloads of politics. She was starting a new life now and putting it behind her.
When she’d retired it had felt wonderful – free time, endless possibilities.
There had been so much tedium through those decades of office work that held her back.
But her days had become long.
Recently her best friends had moved nearer their grandchildren, and life was quiet.
Sounds Like Radio was anything but quiet.
At one point a man with a dark beard and thick glasses stopped in front of the window to the corridor and stared in at her before going on his way.
She wondered if this was the infamous Kevin.
The cables all done, Gerry helped Cesca (back from a café trip) to take down the rest of Kevin’s set-up from yesterday.
“He leaves these massively complicated rigs up,” Cesca said, “wrongly assuming I’ll reuse them.”
“You’d do yours differently?” Gerry asked.
“Every sound engineer has their quirks, favourite microphones for certain spaces, that sort of thing.
“Kevin feels that his are better than anybody else’s, or rather he frets that a show won’t get the absolute best in technical support if it’s not his rig.”
“But you both have the skills?”
Cesca nodded.
“I don’t want you to think badly of our Kev. He cares.”
“But I have the bottom line in mind. Fees for studio time have been shaved to the bone.
“I’m often asked to record forty minutes or more of audio in a day – that’s a lot.
“Sometimes I find Kevin rerecording a perfectly good scene because he thinks he heard a fly buzzing.
“Then we have to use more studio time but without the fee.”