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Far Off Sounds (series)

Far Off Sounds (series)

Far Off Sounds is a documentary series that explores how people use, play, and connect with music around the world. Japanese noise artists, Ethiopian jazz musicians, cult leaders, heavy metal cruises and more. The show tells discreet, intimate stories, in the service of the larger, infinitely complex story of music on earth.

Far Off Sounds (series)
  • Far Off Sounds Ep 1 - Songs Of The Snake Handlers

    Directed by Jacob Hurwitz-Goodman and Nick George • Documentary • 2018 • 8 minutes

    In Middlesboro, Kentucky, the Full Gospel Tabernacle has a dangerous method for showing their faith in God. They raise and handle deadly snakes with their bare hands. We travelled to Middlesboro to meet Pastor Jai...

  • Far Off Sounds Ep 2 - The Rogue Generator Concerts of Tampa

    Directed by Jacob Hurwitz-Goodman and Nick George • Documentary • 2018 • 6 minutes

    There's a gang of guys and gals in Tampa who, frustrated at the lack of venues for their experimental sounds, took to the streets in the early 2000's to perform under bridges, in alleyways, in construction sites, ...

  • Far Off Sounds Ep 3 - Deep Black Sea

    Directed by Jacob Hurwitz-Goodman and Nick George • Documentary • 2018 • 8 minutes

    We boarded 70,000 Tons Of Metal, a heavy-metal cruise ship sailing from Miami to the Turks and Cacos Islands, and drifted into the middle of the deep, black sea. We met metalheads of all persuasions, got seasick, ...

  • Far Off Sounds Ep 4 - Kroncong Tugu

    Directed by Jacob Hurwitz-Goodman and Nick George • Documentary • 2018 • 6 minutes

    We take a two hour taxi ride from South Jakarta to the Tugu area of North Jakarta - an area home to a small enclave of Portuguese descendent Christian Betawi folk - to visit with the band Keroncong Tugu. The group...

  • Far Off Sounds Ep 5 - Hailu Mergia Takes Off

    Directed by Jacob Hurwitz-Goodman and Nick George • Documentary • 2018 • 10 minutes

    Hailu Mergia was the leader of one of the biggest jazz funk bands in Ethiopia in the 1970′s. His band, The Walias Band, reached the pinnacle of success in Ethiopia, eventually being invited to play for the presid...

  • Far Off Sounds Ep 6 - Chief's Funeral

    Directed by Jacob Hurwitz-Goodman and Nick George • Documentary • 2018 • 9 minutes

    "For eight months in 2011 I was living and working in northern Ghana as a videographer. My company gave me a house near a small farming village called Fuo, where I lived alone for most of the time. One afternoon, ...

  • Far Off Sounds Ep 7 - God's Singing Man

    Directed by Jacob Hurwitz-Goodman and Nick George • Documentary • 2018 • 22 minutes

    In 1966, Dave Bixby burned out on LSD and went temporarily out of his mind. What pulled him back was his encounter with a wandering spiritualist named Don Degraff. Together they formed a prayer group and played m...

  • Far Off Sounds Ep 8 - Fish & Synths

    Directed by Jacob Hurwitz-Goodman and Nick George • Documentary • With Richard Kik • 2018 • 7 minutes

    Richard Kik chooses, breeds, maintains, and studies the fish at Detroit's historic Belle Isle Aquarium, holding this gorgeous and fragile institution essentially on his shoulders. Richard is als...

  • Far Off Sounds Ep 9 - IASOS

    Directed by Jacob Hurwitz-Goodman and Nick George • Documentary • 2018 • 9 minutes

    Iasos began receiving music in his head from another dimension when he was a college student in 1965. He called it 'Paradise Music', and it was unlike anything he had ever heard. These incoming signals, and his ef...

  • Far Off Sounds Ep 10 - Dancers Without A Stage

    Directed by Jacob Hurwitz-Goodman and Nick George • Documentary • 2018 • 5 minutes

    Under a bridge near a train station in Jakarta, Indonesia, an outdoor nightclub is the last of its kind, keeping a traditional Sundanese art­form called Jaipong alive. Jaipong, originally a village ritual associat...

  • Far Off Sounds Ep 11 - Mister Moonbeam

    Directed by Jacob Hurwitz-Goodman and Nick George • Documentary • 2018 • 11 minutes

    On any given night, you may find yourself serenaded by a living mannequin on Sunset Blvd. A Gulf War veteran, motorcycle gang member, stockbroker, chimney sweep, inventor, musician, and brilliant performer, we ha...

  • Far Off Sounds Ep 12 - Hollerin'

    Directed by Jacob Hurwitz-Goodman and Nick George • Documentary • 2018 • 8 minutes

    First held in 1969 in Spivey’s Corner, North Carolina, the annual National Hollerin’ Contest is a daylong celebration of Southern cultural heritage and preservation of an archaic means of long­ distance communicat...

  • Far Off Sounds Ep 13 - The Space Lady

    Directed by Jacob Hurwitz-Goodman and Nick George • Documentary • With Susan Dietrich Schneider • 2018 • 8 minutes

    The Space Lady, aka Susan Dietrich Schneider, became a staple of the Bay Area outsider music scene through years of busking the streets out of necessity. Her ethereal, echo-­laden a...

  • Far Off Sounds Ep 14 - Microtonal Man

    Directed by Jacob Hurwitz-Goodman and Nick George • Documentary • 2018 • 14 minutes

    John Schneider won a 2015 Grammy for his album performing music composed by the midcentury genius Harry Partch, an American pioneer of microtonal music. Why has Schneider, a music theory professor and radio host,...

  • Far Off Sounds Ep 15 - Huun Huur Tu- The Tuvan Masters

    Directed by Jacob Hurwitz-Goodman and Nick George • Documentary • 2018 • 10 minutes

    "Tuvan throat-singing", or khoomei, is an ancient pastime in the steppes of Tuva, a country nestled between Mongolia and Russia. For thousands of years, herders and farmers there have taught their children to sin...

  • Far Off Sounds Ep 16 - The Good Doctors of Nima

    Directed by Jacob Hurwitz-Goodman and Nick George • Documentary • 2018 • 16 minutes

    We were invited to a fetish ceremony in the innercity of Accra, the capital of Ghana. What we found was animal sacrifice, ancestor communion, and some of the most tranced-out hypnotic drumming in the world.

  • Far Off Sounds Ep 17 - Fantasies In Crystal

    Directed by Jacob Hurwitz-Goodman and Nick George • Documentary • 2018 • 12 minutes

    Three generations of artists make up Fantasies in Crystal, although one of them is dead. Erin Schneider and her father, the Grammy-winning musician John Schneider, perform hypnotic live music to a slideshow of cr...

  • Far Off Sounds Ep 18 - Onyx Ashanti Programs Himself

    Directed by Jacob Hurwitz-Goodman and Nick George • Documentary • 2018 • 13 minutes

    Onyx Ashanti is a Detroit-based Afrofuturist living in a basement with only an extension cord from a nearby unit. When he's not traveling the world having sonic conversations about evolution and technology, he's ...

  • Far Off Sounds Ep 19 - The Disappearing Bamboo Wind

    Directed by Jacob Hurwitz-Goodman and Nick George • Documentary • 2018 • 14 minutes

    There's this instrument called the "a'reng", played by the Pako people in Vietnam and Laos. It's one of the craziest most beautiful most perplexing musical instruments on Earth. We set off for Vietnam to try and ...

  • Far Off Sounds Ep 20 - Cambodia, California

    Directed by Jacob Hurwitz-Goodman and Nick George • Documentary • 2018 • 17 minutes

    In Long Beach, CA, a late-blooming newlywed couple work to preserve the remnants of Cambodian music and literature left in the wake of the Khmer Rouge genocide, which they both escaped from in the early 1980's. W...

  • Far Off Sounds Ep 21 - Marginal Consort, The Sound Of No Music

    Directed by Jacob Hurwitz-Goodman and Nick George • Documentary • 2018 • 14 minutes

    The members of Marginal Consort met in art school in 1970's Japan. They create elaborate instrumental systems from household items and hardware-store treasures.

    Once a year, Marginal Consort meets up to perfo...