Support Tone Madison by purchasing a “Listen to the sky” shirt

Tone Madison is once again releasing a shirt celebrating our original editorial art. This shirt features the work of the illustrious Andrew Mulhearn, who has contributed several editorial illustrations over the years, including most recently our spring zine on body cameras.

Mulhearn made this illustration for the August 5, 2022 Microtones article “Listen to the sky” by Phoebe Schlough about listening to naturally occurring radio signals, called sferic, short for “Radio Atmospheric Signal” on short-wave radio.

“The sounds are mostly a dense cacophony of pops, clicks, and tweeks, with an odd whistle if you’re out at the right time of year and get particularly lucky. If the aurora is particularly strong, you might hear chirps and whistles like a chorus of birds. In the same way that AM radio signals can be picked up several states away from where they’re broadcasting, these sorts of very low frequency (VLF for short) radio signals can bounce off the ground and upper atmosphere, allowing them to travel around the world, or even through the magnetic field lines of the earth if conditions are just right. The farther a signal travels, the more distorted it becomes. In the most extreme cases, sferics sound to the human ear like ethereal, ghostly whistles.”

Purchasing this shirt will directly help Tone Madison bring more expansive, esoteric stories to you. It will also help independent artists, like Mulhearn, with whom Tone Madison is sharing a portion of the funds received from sales of this shirt.