A zero-emission compact hydrogen power plant will drive the two stages at Clifton Down in Bristol

When Lorde, Little Simz and Wet Leg stride on to stages in Bristol this weekend, they will not only be entertaining tens of thousands of festivalgoers but taking part in what is being billed as a world-first clean power project.

The two stages at Forwards festival on Clifton Down are being driven almost entirely by green power – a combination of hydrogen and mobile batteries charged with sustainable energy.

For more than a century, visitors to America’s beloved Yellowstone National Park have reported odd, fleeting sounds that seem to center on the famous park’s largest lakes.

With descriptions that range from a noise resembling the steady humming of bees to distant “music” or bells, or even the vibration of metal cables, the park has a surprisingly deep history involving these odd sounds—one that extends all the way back to before the massive tract of land officially became America’s first national park.

Over time, several natural explanations have been proposed for the phenomenon, although the exact cause behind Yellowstone’s ethereal lake music has never been established.

Strange Sounds Over Yellowstone’s Lakes

Historical accounts describing this sonic mystery generally focus on reports from near Yellowstone Lake and Shoshone Lake. According to Lee Whittlesey, now a retired Professional Historian who worked at Yellowstone National Park for 16 years, written descriptions of the park’s strange sounds extend back at least to the late 19th century.

Among the earliest and most detailed accounts appeared in engineer Hiram M. Chittenden’s 1895 book The Yellowstone National Park: Historical and Descriptive. “A most singular and interesting acoustic phenomenon of this region, although rarely noticed by tourists, is the occurrence of strange and indefinable overhead sounds,” Chittenden wrote at the time. “They have long been noted by explorers, but only in the vicinity of Shoshone and Yellowstone Lakes.”

Often occurring most often in the mornings, Chittenden noted that the sounds were usually fleeting, and compared them to “the ringing of telegraph wires or the humming of a swarm of bees.”

An even earlier account was documented in 1892 by Edwin Linton, who reportedly heard a combination of sounds resembling wind moving through treetops, distant bells, and the buzzing of insects. A description provided by one member of his party described the phenomenon as “a twisting sort of yow-yow vibration,” while Elwood Hofer, the party’s guide on this occasion, reportedly called it “the most mysterious sound heard among the mountains.”

The following year, a similar account was logged by scientist S.A. Forbes, who described hearing a vibrating, harp-like “clang” that, not unlike Linton’s account, seemed to originate from around the nearby treetops. At times, the sound also seemed to resemble the murmuring of “faintly heard voices answering each other overhead.”

“It begins softly in the remote distance,” Forbes wrote, adding that the sound increased gradually as it drew nearer, producing increasingly pronounced pulses as it approached, then gradually faded away just as it appeared.

Chittenden was sufficiently impressed by the reports to speculate that in another place and era, such sounds might have inspired “superstitious reverence or dread.”

“No rational explanation has ever been advanced for this remarkable phenomenon,” he wrote.

A Mystery Older Than Yellowstone National Park

One of the oldest known accounts of unusual sounds in the area predates Yellowstone’s formal establishment as a U.S. national park.

In 1871, Geologist Frank H. Bradley participated in the Hayden Geological Survey, a federally funded expedition which played a crucial role in the park’s history, as its findings helped persuade Congress to formally decide on protecting Yellowstone the following year.

While conducting fieldwork with the expedition, Bradley recalled hearing “a curious sound” that he characterized as being “between a whistle and a horse whine” one morning as his party prepared breakfast.

“The sound increased in force,” Bradley wrote, “and it now became evident that gusts of wind were passing through the air above us, though the pines did not as yet indicate the least motion in the lower atmosphere.”

What Causes Yellowstone’s Mysterious Sounds?

By the early decades of the 20th century, potential explanations for the phenomenon were being put forward by researchers.

In 1930, one brief account that appeared in Popular Science entertained the possibility that seismic activity could be the driving force behind the noises. In 1937, Yellowstone Ranger and Naturalist Neil Miner offered a different theory: an atmospheric explanation, which resulted from “horizontally moving whirlpools of air” that he said descended from some of the park’s nearby mountain peaks.

The unusual sounds long associated with Yellowstone may not be entirely unique to the park, however. For at least as long as visitors to the park have reported strange sonic experiences, reports of mysterious booming, rumblings, unusual humming or buzzing, whistling, and sounds compared to music have been reported at locations around the world, sometimes inspiring colorful names such as New York’s “Seneca Guns” and other similar variants.

While Yellowstone’s own brand of peculiar sounds seems to belong somewhere in this broader family of natural acoustic phenomena, their specific cause remains elusive, even more than 150 years after Bradley first recorded them.

In a landscape already famous for geysers, earthquakes, hot springs, and a vast volcanic system that may someday erupt again, it is easy to see how the unexplained, music-like sounds associated with Yellowstone’s lakes add a unique and mysterious footnote to the natural history of America’s oldest national park.

Micah Hanks is the Editor-in-Chief and Co-Founder of The Debrief. A longtime reporter on science, defense, and technology with a focus on space and astronomy, he can be reached at micah@thedebrief.org. Follow him on X @MicahHanks, and at micahhanks.com.

Ethan Millman, writing for The Hollywood Reporter:

Apple Music will soon launch labels on songs created with artificial intelligence, the company said in an email sent out to industry partners on Thursday.

In the email, obtained by The Hollywood Reporter, the streaming service said that AI music labels will come “later this year,” though Apple Music didn’t disclose a specific launch date.

The new labels come months after Apple Music launched transparency tags back in March, available for record labels and music distributors to disclose when content uploaded was “materially generated using AI.”

Good. As much as I enjoy working and tinkering with AI, AI “music” falls squarely in the category of AI implementations I do not understand and cannot even be remotely interested in. Perhaps I’m old-fashioned, but what’s the point of listening to “music” performed by something you can’t see live on a stage, or that you know has never lived a real life? (Obviously we can’t see The Beatles or Beethoven perform live today, but we know they were real humans with real motivations behind their work.)

If you ask me, AI music shouldn’t even be allowed on streaming services, but I suppose it’s too late to fix that problem by now. Hopefully Apple will also include a system-level toggle to permanently hide AI “music” from Apple Music’s UI, too.

Source: Apple.

Today, Jungle released their fifth studio album, Sunshine. Alongside the release, Apple published a look at how the band used Apple Creator Studio to film 11 music videos in just four days, an impressive feat no matter the technology used.

The band’s toolbox included Logic Pro, Final Cut Pro, and Pixelmator Pro to capture the series of signature one-shot take videos. According to the App Store feature on the band’s process, Logic Pro was where the entire album was produced. The app’s Varispeed feature was also used to shift the tempo of songs while maintaining pitch as they shot the videos.

Final Cut Pro’s Magnetic Mask was used to composite footage quickly. Jungle’s Tom McFarland told Apple:

Final Cut Pro is like a magic sword. There’s one shot for the track ‘Romeo II,’ where the camera accidentally caught some of the lighting rig. With five clicks, the editor was able to paint it out. It just automatically knows.

Pixelmator Pro on the iPad with an Apple Pencil and Mac enabled the band’s team to add artwork and posters to the final product, too.

But of all the quotes from the band, J Lloyd’s comment really struck a chord with me:

We didn’t have to worry about the tech. We could just focus on getting the design right. I could pick up the iPad between takes and keep sketching on Pixelmator Pro, and it all just worked.

I love apps, or I wouldn’t write about them every day, but what I love even more is the creativity they enable. Getting a glimpse of how one of my favorite bands uses some of the same tools I do was a treat.