The Tower

“At the centre of the city lies The Tower, an abandoned relic of a forgotten age, built by a proud king who wanted to rule the sky as well as the land.

One night, Kiri decides to leave behind her suffocating, isolated life in the city and climb the Tower, not quite understanding why. As she climbs, she finds payphones, and she calls those who she has left behind…” 

Much like fringe shows or short films, one of the wildest freedoms of indie audio and/or the scripted podcast form is that you can take your idea pretty much wherever you want. 

And this isn’t just setting and story. Your episodes can be as long or short as you want. Your cast can consist of a single voice or a whole crowd. Your soundscapes can be minimal, or musical - punctuated by immersive sound-effects or coloured by tape noise - the end effect, journalistic or otherworldly. Of course, every element beyond the binary of silence and voice is extra work - but that’s your choice to make. 

It would be a mistake, though, to think you can’t mix and match from the list above. The Tower’s pitch may read like a modern myth, complete with widescreen FX and cinematic sweeps - but its tone is actually achingly intimate. We get our protagonist’s voice-over, her grainy phone calls back to the city, and cryptic, lilting music which ebbs and flows around her slow progress.

It often feels like a magic trick you’re glad to have volunteered for.

I mapped this mysterious structure with Amber Devereux, who wrote, directed and produced. It wasn’t their first venture into indie audio - with stories set in a spacecraft (Tin Can) and the underworld (Middle:Below) preceding - but it would push harder at the borders of genre. 

Maybe because growing confidence in any medium often unlocks an ever greater (if disguised and diffused) power of autobiography. Our voice takes shape in learning to sing.

The Spark

Amber: “The Tower started as a side project. I wanted to do something more with music. 

Because my experience making music for audio dramas before that was - you know, the musician was asked to come in when everything else was already done. Whereas my view is that you should bring them in as soon as possible so they can get to know the story better.
        And the other side of it is that - I don’t think audio drama has a musical language yet. Composing for film, you have to be really obvious. But in audio drama, that comes across as over the top, because it’s a very intimate medium.
        So I take more influence from video game music - which has a different purpose to film music. I think it's trying to find where those two overlap and then going, well, this is what I think works for audio drama.”

Like - in a role-playing type game, you'll have the music which you hear when you go into the village, then different music in the caves - that kind of situational thing..?

Amber: “A little bit, but the thing I find most interesting is that - you are a character in this.
        So the music has much more of a role of...this is how your character is feeling right now. And I think that's closer than film music, which is more - this is how you should interpret this scene.”

Like, matching an external view panning across something or zooming in...

Amber: “Exactly, it's much more leading.

I think you can be a bit more subtle and ambient in audio drama. But that's something I'm still figuring out - with every new project. I don't have a grand unified theory yet ...but I'm working on it.”

“I wanted to do something more with music.”

Amber: “This was 2018, 2019 - and a lot of stuff had changed in a very short space of time. So I kind of felt a bit...untethered, a bit ungrounded. 

And I was playing a game called Celeste, which is about a young woman who...climbs a mountain. There was this moment, quite early on, where the main character rings their mum because they're having a panic attack.
        I remember really liking that. Like - there's something in there worth exploring. The sound of it came first. But it became more about the story, and the characters, and the acting - so the sound changed a lot. 

For a very long time, I didn't know what the music was going to sound like. I kept trying things and I'm like ...this doesn't work. It meant that the music was being made while the series was being edited. I had two project files open throughout the process.
        It wasn't until I put the phone filter on the characters’ voices... That was when I was, like - oh, I know what it sounds like now. And then made the theme tune.” 

That makes sense to me, because the music literally sounds reflective. You've said that a bunch of personal stuff went into it - and sometimes that's not necessarily autobiographical detail - sometimes it's more like a mood, an attitude.
        And when you say you were questioning some things - The Tower is a very questioning text, a very unsettled text - a very kind of exploratory story,  literally.

In terms of structure - sometimes you make something without knowing the rules and it's a fucking disaster. But sometimes you accidentally do stuff that technically you're not supposed to - and you find this audience that have been starved for that kind of content, because everyone else has been following the rules.
        One of the things that struck me when I first heard The Tower was that it occupied its own space. Each episode is so short - relatively - it feels quite a poetic form..? 

Amber: “Maybe a couple of years before, my partner and I had started intermingling with the Scottish spoken word poetry scene. We were a bit itchy to keep making stuff and get some validation, basically. Something that had more instant gratification.
        It's how I met Mark Gallie, who plays Ike in The Tower. He is a poet. And I think just hearing a lot of poetry, hearing what works, definitely had a big influence. 

Also, talking about episode structure, I probably should read a book about how to write at some point, right? But I didn't treat The Tower as episodes, I treated them as tracks. That was why the lengths aren't consistent - much to the chagrin of some reviewers…”

“...hearing a lot of poetry definitely had a big influence.”

Into Production

What I want to talk about most specifically is the form you've taken - with music setting a mood and maybe even shaping a narrative. 

Amber: “All the monologues obviously need their own piece of music. Certain bits of the conversation... But the tone tends to be informed a lot more by the performance of the actors.
        I can write lines a certain way - then the actors put their own spin on it - and that, in turn, influences the music and the production. Which I feel is how it should be.

I have two project files. The actual episode - and the music. I'll drag out a piece in the episode - right, okay, I've got to fill two minutes with music... Come up with a piece of music that's two minutes long, then export it.
        So the music is baked in with the episode at that final mastering process, which I think makes it more part of the series, rather than being this thing that exists on top of all the action.”

And this process extends to some unexpected palaces. For example, the episode in Season One which consists entirely of music - as our protagonist takes in the view from the tower, saying nothing, thinking nothing. Just feeling. 

Amber: “The musical episode is called ‘The Fog Clears’.”

Yeah - and what that descriptive title translates into is an emotional space to imagine it for yourself. And I thought it was, you know, quietly audacious.

Amber: “It's been a little bit divisive. There's a couple of reviews where they're like - why are you calling this an episode? It's just a piece of music.
        Which, you know - honestly, fair enough. 

We did a similar thing with Part Two - a musical interlude. And that one was a lot more experimental. Because that whole series is to do with time loops and time travel and things - it was like a looping delay kind of experiment with that. 

Again, it's billed as an experimental audio drama for a reason.”

“...it's billed as an experimental audio drama for a reason.”

I've seen you describe it as a concept album.

Amber: “It's also sold as an album version. So with Part One, it was just all the episodes played in sequence. Part Two - the Bandcamp version has been mixed, so each episode plays into the next one.”

Aside from music, Amber and the actors casually applied the same kind of creativity to recording lines - again, to capture the feel of the characters’ reality.

Amber: “The initial problem was how we were going to record it. Because we're all going to be in the same room, but it's a story where nobody is in the same room… 

So I had them on opposite ends of the room, facing away from each other. Basically, we recorded it like a stage play where Pellow would finish Chris's phone call then go sit down - Mark would come up to the microphone - and we'd record it like that. for Katrina, it was one long performance.

The other thing was - we needed it to sound like they were actually on the phone. So we had the actors hold phones up to their ears. We were recording on the microphone - the phones weren't actually doing anything. It was more to kind of trick their brains.
        Then I added an EQ on top, but also a vinyl kind of click to it, just to degrade the signal a little bit.”

“I think a big thing worth saying is that, as the series has gone on, it's become more collaborative. I sat down with everyone and said, what do you think is important to your character? And came to a consensus.
        It meant that we were all coming into the recording studios on the same page.” 

The Flame

I think, with The Tower, there's something about the elegance of doing a lot with a few gestures. Like - there's a big difference between complexity and complicated.
        Complicated is, for example, Transformers films, where a fight sequence goes on for 20 minutes and you've completely lost track of what's happening. It becomes a firework show. Whereas complexity can just be these more human things - you could say ‘telling details’.
        If something’s complicated, you might not know what’s happening. If it’s complex, you might not know what to think - or feel - about what you know is happening.

Amber: “It is so personal, you know?
         That was my concern with making more. For Part Three, we managed to get funding from Creative Scotland, which was great. 

But my concern was - we're at the stage now where the stakes need to be made higher. So we do bring in stuff that affects people down at the bottom of the tower. 

It was never going to be a world-defining story, because that's not how real life works. You don't have these singular events that are dependent on one person.”

Received wisdom is that your most experimental work will automatically be your least popular work - but The Tower has actually become Tin Can Audio’s signature show. Perfect proof that sometimes what people want isn’t to meet you halfway, but to follow you somewhere interesting (whether you know exactly where you’re going or not).
        Rightfully encouraged by its success, Amber has continued to push in a dizzying amount of different directions since. There’s the public information-styled shorts of The Dungeon Economic Model, the queer horror one-shots of Folxlore, and a few projects exploring the spontaneity of performing live on Twitch.

As bright as the future looks, I asked them to look back on the highs so far. The fog clears:

Amber: “We were able to demonstrate that Scotland can be a production hub for audio drama in the UK. It can stand on its own. Also, it makes us a global player - because our audience is international.
        And there's a groundswell at the moment of younger people making their own shows. That's what should happen.”

“...our audience is international.”

Amber: “When we made part one, the idea was - if people like it, we'll make more ...and people did. But, because it is quite a small series, I didn't want to tie everyone to this project. Like, Katrina is now working for the BBC, David Pellow is now a dad. So it's just kind of like - our lives are changing in terms of priorities.”

Life is getting in the way of your artistic integrity!

Amber: “And there's nothing wrong with that.

I'm excited to see what we make next.”

Listen to The Tower.

Or, for yet more hard-won wisdom from Amber, click on their name to visit their profile page. And! Check out their contributions to the ever-expanding practical podcasting database, elsewhere onsite.

For the other side of the story - that of contributors to the show - follow the names below to interviews with actors and more.

Mark Gallie (Actor - Ike)

Coming Soon
David Pellow (Actor - Chris)