We all know the pleasures of getting lost on a bike ride, of being able to let your mind wonder, to experience the world via two wheels. Now, podcaster Matheus Siqueira has launched an attempt to bring that to people when they’re at their desk, on a walk, in their car.
The Brazilian is the man behind the Ride With Me podcast, a project that seeks to bring cycling “soundscapes” from around the world to people’s ears.
Siqueira has listed the podcast as part of a growing wave of podcasts designed to elicit ASMR, or Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response, the tingling sensation some people experience when they hear certain sounds – think the opposite of nails on a chalk board. But he admits this doesn’t fully encompass what it is. Instead, it is an auditory experience, one that transports the listeners to Jerusalem and Girona – the two locations recorded so far.
“It’s not exactly ASMR, it’s more like slow radio or soundscapes,” Siqueira tells Cycling Weekly from São Paulo. “If I call it this though, people don’t know what it is. When I’m on my bike, there’s the noise of changing gears, the noise of the wheels, you can hear the noise of the tyres on the tarmac. But there are also the noises outside: the birds, the noise of the city.
“I’ve been doing podcasts since I was a teenager, so I thought I could try an art experiment and see if I could get decent soundscapes on my bike ride. I am doing binary recording, so I had to put the microphones inside ‘ears’, I have these silicone ears that are 20cm apart, and fit in my bar bag. Then I started to record rides that I’ve been doing.”
Siqueria heads out on rides to try and help people experience locations that they might not have been before, with the help of a binaural rig – stereo microphones, in effect – which allows him to capture his experience.
“It was interesting, I went to Israel with my bike and started recording, and it’s a very foreign soundscape to me,” he said. “One of the fun parts is listening back to what I pass through, and I discovered it was very different. Brief segments of people talking, cars passing with music on, there are mosques and other sounds.
“I capture the environment also with the sound of the bike, for an hour. I’m experimenting, and I don’t know what will work or not. There are noises from the person who is riding, and for now I’ve been removing this. I’m trying to work out if people are interested in this or not, maybe if I can get a pro rider, their breathing might be different.”