As you might guess from a title like “Audio Transmission Sending Waves,” the host of this RadioUTD show, Noah Rayburn, can be a bit eccentric. In the short time I chatted with him he told me stories of fish men from Atlantis, hinted at a dark past with the sky people, and shifted his accent and manner of speaking multiple times. That ever-changing feeling is exactly what Noah brings to his show on Wednesdays from 3pm to 6pm, and it’s a blast every time.

“Every week my show is kind of different,” Noah explained. “Usually I play on tropes or create little stories. This week I’m interviewing my clone… I’m just gonna try to interview myself, switching between these [characters]. I like the Jekyll and Mr. Hyde thing.” But Noah doesn’t only talk to himself. Rather, he tries to make his show an interactive experience for his listeners, putting out polls and taking questions from the live comments on Radio’s website. It feels really personal, hearing your comment read out loud and laughing with him as he riffs on it.

In between comedy skits and character work, Noah plays plenty of ambient, experimental music that feels strange yet familiar. “I like that vaporwave-y type stuff that brings forth these half-formed memories,” he said. “I kind of want my show to feel like a fever dream. Like, you’re laying on the couch with a 110 degree fever in the middle of summer, and you’re not sure if what you just heard actually happened, and you’re not sure if that’s really your dog or if you’re just seeing things.”

Noah recalled how he first got into electronica, not directly but through the other music he was interested in at the time. “I guess it goes back to high school… I was vocalist and lead guitar in this crappy grunge band.” During his grunge phase he was a fan of Radiohead, which ended up becoming the gateway to the types of soundscapes he plays on his show today. “I heard Thom Yorke babbling about Aphex Twin in an interview, and I checked him out…That was like a dichotomy shift for me, where it was like, ‘Whoa, this is a new level of music for me.’ Whatever part of my brain that laid dormant there, it activated it.”

With that new spark of inspiration, Noah started making his own music under the artist name Nobey One, and since then he’s even been signed under an online label. He doesn’t stop at music though, also creating frame-by-frame animations to his songs in MS Paint like a one-man “Fantasia.” He figures most people who like weird animations will like weird music, too, and he feels that crossover has definitely helped his growth online. “[The creator of Newgrounds] Tom Fulp, he created video games like ‘Castle Crashers’ and all this stuff that I grew up playing. He DM’d me saying how much he liked my animations.” Impressed, I asked Noah what it feels like now that he’s not just an observer, making his own music and art and getting to be a part of these communities he’s looked up to for so long. “It’s bizarre to see. I think if I showed high school Noah like, ‘Hey, people are gonna be writing about you online,’ I would have lost my mind.” 

Despite how important music is to him, Noah’s entry into RadioUTD was practically an accident. Noah was hanging out with some of his friends who work at the Mercury, and happened to be in the Student Media office on the day Radio’s DJ interviews were ending. Even though he had never officially applied, he decided to ask for an interview. “I think I talked my way into their hearts, because they gave me a chance,” Noah laughed. He had been wanting to join Radio for a while, so it was especially lucky. “I like putting together playlists, I like categorizing things, and of course I love music. I also wanted to meet people that were similarly as ecstatic about music as I am, and I got that! These people in Radio, they’re fantastic. They all care.”

Besides being a DJ, Noah is also the Promotions Manager for Radio, planning their events on campus and taking a particular interest in the Instagram page. “What I’ve been trying to do is inject personality and flavor and art into it. I treat it like an art project, basically.” Noah added that he doesn’t see the purpose in making a social media page clinical and impersonal, especially one meant to promote music, which is an art form. He’s happy to see all the positive feedback the Instagram has gotten since he started in this position, and has plenty of plans to continue improving it.

When asked about upcoming Radio events he’s excited to participate in, Noah immediately knew his answer: the Halloween show. “I think they might use my two and a half hour mix for it, ‘cause I put a lot of effort into this mix using dark techno, and a lot of weird dark ambient that I mixed in. It’s definitely the idea of something spooky.” He was especially happy about this because Halloween is his favorite holiday. “Oh my God, it’s the aesthetics, purely. It’s like you get to be something else for a little bit,” he whispered conspiratorially.

In the leadup to the best day of the year, Noah has started playing some more ominous songs that he feels fit the Halloween vibe. For example, Autechre’s album “EXAI” has been on his show a lot lately. “Those are some spooky-ass tracks,” he said with full sincerity. “That stuff is dark, primordial. It sounds like it came out of some kind of alternate dimension, and then it found hip hop and liked it. It’s fascinating.” The song “Mononucleosis” by Ween is also a recent favorite of his. “That album [‘The Pod’] is a bit like taking too much cough syrup, and then you throw up and land face down, and that’s how the music sounds.” He then clarified this description was definitely a good thing, though I’m not sure any sane person should be as excited by the concept of laying in their own vomit as Noah was.

My biggest takeaway from talking to him was that Noah is such a cool and creative person. He’s already accomplished as an artist and he’s still growing. I only got to meet him thanks to his involvement in RadioUTD; it’s crazy how something like that can bring people together, and Noah seemed to agree:

“Connecting with people [in RadioUTD] like my bud Henry – we’ve got a collab album that’s going to be coming out on a label soon. We’re hyped about that. That wouldn’t have happened unless I came here.”