In the wake of the 2011 earthquake and tsunami that devastated Japan’s Tōhoku region, a resident of the small town of Ōtsuchi opened a public telephone booth in his garden. Inside, a disconnected phone invited visitors to speak their grief aloud, carrying on the wind painful stories that would be near-impossible to let rest anywhere else. Since the installation of this “Wind Phone,” tens of thousands have made the pilgrimage to pick up the receiver and dial into the void.

Natural reactions to disaster might be choked silence, but for the OO-Ray—Portland-based experimental cellist Ted Laderas—making sound is a way forward. On his new album Marginals, Laderas crafts his own mourning calls. Each track is an elegy referencing a specific calamity, some well known, others more obscure. With a l

See Full Page