This year has lasted a million years and also 12 minutes

December 16, 2020 6:39 PM

Each year since 2016, Australian film critic and journalist Marc Fennell releases The Year in Sound, an audio mashup track summarising the events of the year. In 12 intense minutes, here is 2020 in Sound.

You can listen to previous years on Soundcloud.

posted by His thoughts were red thoughts (16 comments total)

Also here's a glimpse of The Year in Sound in ProTools. It looks intimidating.
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 6:41 PM on December 16, 2020

This was powerful thank you.

Gotta say though, 2020 is not a mixtape I would give anyone I liked.
posted by mundo at 7:29 PM on December 16, 2020 [3 favorites]

One small moment in listening to this (which is pretty intense in various ways) was the clip from the Black Lives Matter segment about "take your knee off our necks" and then many minutes later, RBG saying "all we want is for our brothers to take their foot off our necks".

Not sure I would have drawn that parallel before, but that was one small very effective piece of this really excellent piece of sonic art/journalism.
posted by hippybear at 7:32 PM on December 16, 2020 [1 favorite]

What a year...

Nice that after all that horror, it ends with some hopefullness.
posted by Windopaene at 8:02 PM on December 16, 2020

Like 20s in, being reminded of the bushfires, and I'm all "Hurry up! Bring on the global pandemic! This fire stuff is too scary and depressing..."
posted by pompomtom at 9:21 PM on December 16, 2020 [2 favorites]

They used to do this on Sunday Edition (maybe they still do), an audio collage of the week that just passed, and I hated it. All very well and good if you're glued to the radio all week, and know and recognize the sources; but without that context, it's just a string of snippets of stressed-out voices. Who was that? Sounded familiar, but on to the next -- what was that from? Who was that? What was that one all about? No easy answers. No thanks.
posted by Rash at 9:40 PM on December 16, 2020 [1 favorite]

Just... so much has happened, that seems a lot had dropped out of my conscious thoughts. Multiple times thinking "oh right, that too..." What a year; bushfires, BLM, the pandemic, the US Election, anger and loss and loss and loss on so many different fronts. Didn't expect listening to be a teary experience, but there you go.
posted by adamt at 9:41 PM on December 16, 2020 [2 favorites]

This is a bit more curated and narrative about the year, and is less about small moments within a week and rather large sweeps across a longer period of time. It's actually really well-done. I can understand the stress you might feel, but this might have a very different feeling for you.
posted by hippybear at 9:42 PM on December 16, 2020

I managed about eight minutes. I'll listen to the rest. Probably.
posted by pompomtom at 2:17 AM on December 17, 2020

I put this on at work today, working overnights I have some leeway. Slowly but surely over that 12 minutes each employee that could hear it walked over to listen more intently. About 7 minutes 15 seconds in everyone was gathered around just in time to hear about a helicopter. It was about then that they understood what this was and we all listened to the rest of it. After it was over we were shouting across the floor about what we remembered through the year, what and how we felt about it.
posted by JakeEXTREME at 5:10 AM on December 17, 2020 [2 favorites]

It's actually really well-done.

Marc Fennell is like that.

Download This Show
posted by flabdablet at 5:40 AM on December 17, 2020 [1 favorite]

Thanks for posting this. I had forgotten that so much of it happened this year. 2020 really was a shitshow the whole way through, wasn't it? I was doing ok until the last minute when they mentioned people welcoming family at Sydney airport. Then I felt incredibly homesick even though we had no intention of visiting Australia this year.
posted by Kris10_b at 6:29 AM on December 17, 2020 [1 favorite]

well this is absolutely 100% the data dump at the start of a mediocre dystopian movie.
posted by Reclusive Novelist Thomas Pynchon at 9:49 AM on December 17, 2020

This is a hard listen to be honest (great production though), but I'm now thinking I want to read one of those Vox type "actually things are getting better - here's a list of things like 'malaria infections worldwide is down x% this year" articles as a kind of counterpoint.
posted by TwoWordReview at 10:25 AM on December 17, 2020

actually things are getting better

Juukan Gorge isn't getting better.
posted by pompomtom at 5:21 AM on December 19, 2020 [1 favorite]

This is really good. I went to listen to it again, and ..... just..... couldn't. Seriously, Christmas 2021 better be boring. No fires, no smoke, no pandemic. Just mince pies and deciding whether to go to the beach or the movies.
posted by kjs4 at 7:18 PM on December 21, 2020