Music / News at 11

"Good Morning America, I'm Charles Gibson." "I'm Diane Sawyer, and it's Tuesday, Septem—" [Record Scratch]

"Other than that, it's kinda quiet around the country. We like quiet. What is it — it's quiet. It's TOO quiet."

—Audio sample of CBS' Mark McEwen, "8:46 AM"

News at 11 is a Vaporwave Concept Album from 猫 シ Corp., released on September 11, 2016.

The first half of the album takes a look at a particular quiet and beautiful Tuesday morning in September, using samples of various morning news shows and commercials interspersed throughout distorted easy listening music typical of Vaporwave. Several of these clips are conspicuously interrupted by music, and the second half of the album focuses on distorted "Local Forecast" music from The Weather Channel. It attempts to lull you into a sense of security, which feels slightly off...

...And that's because it is slightly off. The first half's audio clips are from the last moments of banal normalcy on the morning of September 11, 2001, before any news about You-Know-What broke. The second half focuses on weather forecasts because they were one of the only news-related outlets at the time that were unaffected by the news of the 9/11 attacks, as if the album itself is in denial of what is happening on the other networks that it's sampling audio from.

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Tracklist

1. "Goodmorning America!" (2:29)
2. "Morning Commute" (2:36)
3. "8:46 AM" (3:51)
4. "Downtown" (2:59)
5. "Channel 4" (3:22)
6. "Heli Tours" (2:16)
7. "Financial News" (6:43)
8. "Tuesday Television" (7:24)
9. "Evening Traffic" (3:45)
10. "THE WEATHER CHANNEL 1" (6:22)
11. "THE WEATHER CHANNEL 2" (3:27)
12. "THE WEATHER CHANNEL 3" (1:45)
13. "THE WEATHER CHANNEL 4" (4:16)
14. "THE WEATHER CHANNEL 5" (2:29)
15. "THE WEATHER CHANNEL 6" (3:22)
16. "THE WEATHER CHANNEL 7" (2:00)
17. "THE WEATHER CHANNEL 8" (2:13)
18. "THE WEATHER CHANNEL 9" (5:22)
19. "THE WEATHER CHANNEL 10" (2:31)
20. "THE WEATHER CHANNEL 11" (1:46)

Note: Bonus tracks "New Amsterdam" and "Uptown Algonquin" were not included on the original release, but are present on a few self-published releases on physical media.

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Examples:

• Anachronic Order: With the clips used.
  • The clip of The Early Show's Mark McEwen on "8:46 AM" comes from fifteen minutes earlier, at 8:31 AM.
  • The commercial break at the beginning of "Financial News" was NBC's last commercial break before cutting directly to footage of the World Trade Center at 8:53 AM; the album instead cuts to a clip of WRC meteorologist Tom Kierein from about twenty minutes earlier. Then, the end of the next track, "Tuesday Television", uses Matt Lauer's interview with writer Richard Hack on Today from right before that same commercial break, which was at about 8:49-8:50.
  • Likewise, the CNN clip and commercial break at the end of "Financial News" was from about 8:47-8:49, roughly just before the Lauer clip.
• Concept Album: It's an illustrative vaporwave soundscape of the calm, almost banal and innocent state of American media right before 9/11 would change everything. There's plenty of ways to interpret what exactly it's set to communicate, but what's important is that the album is built on the context of the attacks rather than being about the actual attacks themselves, which are completely unaddressed.
• Creepy Jazz Music: Most of the songs are sampled from smooth jazz, but the distortion combined with the album's subject matter makes many of the samples sound really creepy.
• Elephant in the Living Room:
  • The 9/11 attacks, intentionally. The first half of the album uses soundbites of morning news shows and commercials from just before the announcements of the attacks, circling around the happier moments right before anything is announced or shown, and intersperses it with easy listening music; any clips from right before the attacks — such as the Today jingle from NBC and the Ditech commercial from CNN in "Financial News," or the Matt Lauer clip used in "Tuesday Television" — get cut off before the news is mentioned. The second half of the album then completely sidesteps the rest of that morning by focusing squarely on distorted "Local Forecast" music and soundbites from The Weather Channel. Most of The Weather Channel's planned programming that day was not affected by the tumultuous events of the day.
  • The track titles also indirectly reference the attacks; one track is called "8:46 AM", which is the most overt reference as 8:46 AM Eastern Time was the exact time of the North Tower attack. The closest the audio itself gets to referencing the attacks is when "Tuesday Television" uses a clip of Matt Lauer interrupting his interview with writer Richard Hack, cutting away as Lauer's voice says, "We want to go live—"
  • This occurs in the other direction as well. The heavier pre-attack news stories consisted of things like an unmanned American spy plane shot down in the southern Iraqi no-fly zone, jury selection in the Andrea Yates trial, an Israeli military action in the West Bank city of Jenin, and Nightline's "Heart of Darkness" series about The Congo Wars.^note ABC's last commercial before breaking into 9/11 coverage was an advertisement for the series, which had begun the previous evening. Naturally, the attacks' coverage prevented the rest of the series from airing in full that week; Nightline would eventually air the remaining parts in January 2002, and the series would go on to win a Peabody Award. In addition, a major ongoing story around that time was Chandra Levy's disappearance. However, the album sidesteps all of these heavy news stories in favor of host banter, fluff about the weather, a couple of interviews, a handful of commercials, and an unremarkable stock market report.
• End of an Age: Vaporwave as a whole likes to depict a grainy, consumerist, faux-nostalgia of The '80s and The '90s, and the unspoken rule is that the 9/11 attacks are the cutoff point. To that end, the album extends this to the very moments right before the terror attacks on the morning of September 11, 2001.
• Film at 11: The album derives its name from the common saying behind this trope, but it's not presented in the conventional sense. Most of the non-music samples are from news programs (and their commercials) on the morning of September 11.
• Irony: Implicit if you recognize the clips used.
  • "Downtown" has a clip of Al Roker calling the morning "a perfect summer morning."^note Most commentary on 9/11 points out that it really started off as a lovely, sunny, cloudless September morning on the East Coast.
  • WUSA anchor Hillary Howard at the end of "Heli Tours":
    "Perfect September day with lots of sunshine. Ohh, would you look at Washington, huh? I'm going outside today."
  • The inclusion of the page quote from Mark McEwen commenting on how "quiet" the day is — which tends to show up a lot in YouTube compilations of pre-attack news footage because of how grimly ironic it would become — is included on "8:46 AM", a track named after the time of the first attack.^note At the exact time of this clip, Flight 11 had been hijacked for about 17 minutes, and was about 15 minutes from crashing into the North Tower at 8:46 AM.
  • In its own way, the last commercial that NBC showed before cutting to footage of the attacks was a cheery commercial from the McDonald's "We Love to See You Smile" ad campaign, which is included in the middle of "Financial News."
  • A Weather Channel soundbite in "THE WEATHER CHANNEL 3" implores listeners to "stay with us, and stay informed." The irony is not only that the music has switched over to Weather Channel music to completely sidestep one of the biggest events in American history, but also that you don't actually hear any weather forecasts on that half of the album.^note The only proper weather forecast heard on the entire album is from Tom Kierein's soundbite in the first half.
• It's Been Done: The Katie Couric quote used at the beginning of "Channel 4", taken from her interview with Harry Belafonte about his Long Road to Freedom box set:
  Katie Couric: I know that you have said that much of the music we listen to today echoes some of the music we heard, say, a hundred years ago, or more.^note Belafonte's response, not heard on the album: "What's astounding is that almost all of American culture, regardless of race, has most of its resonance deeply rooted in African music. And we take an awful lot for granted, whether you're in rock, or you're in rap, or you're in the Broadway theatre, or almost any avenue of musical expression in America, you'll find resonance of Africa throughout the American culture. "
• It's Quiet… Too Quiet: The clip of Mark McEwen that provides the page quote.
• Just Before the End: A non-apocalyptic version. The first half of the album is set the on the morning of September 11, 2001, before the terrorist attacks on the United States are announced. The second half opts to ignore all reporting on 9/11 itself and instead switches over to the weather.
• Mood Whiplash: As odd as this is for an album about 9/11 that doesn't actually include the attacks, "Financial News" stays peppy with its opening commercial break, news clip, and music. It then shifts to banal (the CNN report and ad bumper), soothing (the Georgia Pacific commercial, which has an inspirational-sounding instrumental with people talking and laughing in the background), and then briefly peppy again (the truncated Ditech commercial, which uses jaunty lounge music).
• No Ending: The music in the last track just abruptly stops, with no fade out. You do continue to hear a few more seconds of static, then nothing else.
• Nothing Is Scarier:
  • The soundbites cutting out is unnerving, as even though it's clear what the album is about, it feels as though the album is trying to hide something in its first half.
  • The entire second half dispenses with distinctive track names and the clips of the peppy morning newscasters and commercials, and the only spoken words come from automated repetitive Weather Channel promos and recordings. The sudden absence of morning show banter is noticeable and somewhat spooky, especially given the context of the first half's soundbites.
• Product Placement:
  • Commercials sampled include CarMax, Ross, McDonald's, Georgia Pacific, and Ditech.^note Somewhat of a subversion with the last two — while the CNN announcer mentions Georgia Pacific is a sponsor, the GP commercial's audio is only music, and the Ditech commercial is cut off before the announcer says "Ditech.com".
  • CNN financial reporter Amanda Lang is also heard talking about Nokia, Motorola, and Boeing stocks.
  • One of the bonus tracks mentions Mr. Peanut, the mascot for Planters Nuts; and the other mentions a charity race sponsored by the Freddie Mac Foundation.
• Sampling:
  • The album includes smooth jazz that's standard for vaporwave. Along those same lines, the album's entire second half is sampled from music and automated voice recordings from The Weather Channel.
  • The album also famously includes soundbites of ABC's Charles Gibson and Diane Sawyer; CBS's Mark McEwen; NBC's Katie Couric, Al Roker, and Matt Lauer (the latter of whom is heard interviewing writer Richard Hack); CBS affiliate WUSA's Hillary Howard; NBC affiliate WRC's Tom Kierein; CNNfn's David Haffenreffer; and CNN's Amanda Lang — all sampled from before the attacks on the morning of 9/11.^note The bonus tracks also include NBC's Willard Scott, and NBC affiliate WRC's Barbara Harrison.
  • Beyond those, the album samples commercials for CarMax, Ross, McDonald's, Georgia Pacific, and Ditech — again, all of which aired just before any footage of the attacks was aired.
• Self-Referential Track Placement: After a fashion. There are nine tracks covering general news reports, followed by eleven tracks covering the weather.
• Sexophone: A subversion. Several of the sampled songs have sultry and jazzy sax solos, but the distortion and the subject matter keep it from being sexy. At best it sounds lethargic and hollow; at worst it sounds really creepy.
• Survival Mantra: Phrases such as "current regional conditions" and "the extended forecast" — which were automatic soundbites used during the Weather Channel's local forecasts — get repeated several times in a row on the second half of the album. Author Roisin Kiberd describes it as postponement of the inevitable ("We're near the end now, but the weather's not over yet.").
• Tempting Fate: Mark McEwen's quote about how quiet things are is meant to invoke this, given that the album is about the last few moments in the United States before news on the attacks on the World Trade Center arrive.
• Updated Re Release: Physical media releases included two bonus tracks in the first half that include additional soundbites from Today and NBC affiliate WRC:
  • "New Amsterdam" includes more soundbites of Al Roker^note Picking up where the soundbite in "Downtown" left off, who gives a weather forecast, banters with the Today crowd, introduces Mr. Peanut, and speaks with Willard Scott.
  • "Uptown Algonquin" has a soundbite of Today's Willard Scott throwing back to Matt Lauer, who teases Katie Couric's interview with Harry Belafonte^note Part of which is heard at the beginning of "Channel 4" before throwing to commercial. It then includes a soundbite from WRC anchor Barbara Harrison, who appears in a commercial about a charity race to help kids in foster care.
• Weather Report: The Hillary Howard clip at the end of "Heli Tours" preceded a Washington, D.C. local weather update, and the Tom Kierein soundbite in "Financial News" is a full Washington weather update. The second half of the album is completely comprised of music and distorted soundbites from The Weather Channel's local forecast segment.

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