New Audio Fiction Series “In A Walled City” from Composer/Producer Disparition Introduces a New Kind of Listening Experience for Podcast and Audiobook Fans

Written By Deepthi Welaratna

Los Angeles, CA - March 17, 2021

With In a Walled City, writer and musician Jon Bernstein (aka Disparition) launches a bold new form in the world of audio fiction, cutting through the noise with a new kind of listening experience in which music and word exert equal force. The result is a music-fueled poetic podcast that transports listeners to a magical California landscape full of ghosts and mirrors, with unexpected moments of comedy and beauty piercing through the darkness.

Jon Bernstein, widely known by his stage name Disparition, is a composer, producer, performer, and sound designer based in Los Angeles. Up to now, many listeners know Bernstein / Disparition for his soundtrack and scoring contributions to popular fiction podcasts Welcome to Night Vale and Alice Isn’t Dead. Both podcasts have been turned into NY Times best selling novels and audiobooks, featuring commissioned music by Bernstein / Disparition.

With In A Walled City, Bernstein reintroduces himself as a writer/creator as well as musician. Inspired by his return to California after a decade in New York that included stints in the corporate world in advertising and publishing, Bernstein stitches together dream fragments within a larger narrative world to create the non-linear episodes which combine audio fiction, poetry, music, and noise.

In A Walled City includes scenes of war, trauma, and cultural conflicts that connect to Bernstein’s Eastern European Jewish heritage. This is an influence that runs through the Disparition discography, perhaps most notably on 1989, a concept album that paints a portrait of the last days of the Ceausescu regime in Romania.

Importantly, Bernstein notes that In A Walled City does not describe a post-apocalyptic world, pointing out that the past, present and future are all full of collapsed nations and destroyed cultures even as they continuously invent new ideas, new combinations, new cultures. Of the trend to frame narratives as post-apocalyptic, Bernstein says: “Tumultuous, life changing events can be found across the entire spectrum of human history. Life continues around and between them.”

As much as In A Walled City holds up a dark mirror, it runs through a gamut of funhouse imagery as well, satirizing marketing, cold war propaganda, and music nerd podcasts in episode four “The Marketer.” And while episode 6 “Staves of Salt” paints an at-times chilling portrait of cultural persecution, it also introduces the comically threatening surfer Christian martyr group, the Wolves of Honor.

In A Walled City cuts through the noise of the thousands of podcasts on air and in development with a truly original listening experience that rewards listeners willing to pay attention in a deeper way.

###

Overview:

What: New Audio Fiction Series In A Walled City created by Composer/Producer Jon Bernstein / Disparition (Welcome to Night Vale, Alice Isn’t Dead)

Why: In A Walled City is a new kind of listening experience for podcast and audiobook fans, with a non-linear narrative that transports listeners to a magical California landscape full of ghosts and mirrors, with unexpected moments of beauty and comedy piercing through the darkness.

Who: Fans of Audio Dramas, Fiction Podcasts, Audiobooks

Where: On podcast and music platforms

Platforms:

Episode List:

  1. How to Become a Ghost (Without Dying)

  2. Swords of Salt

  3. Freyam Dreams of Dust

  4. The Marketer

  5. Five

  6. Staves of Smoke

  7. The Rivers Dream of Rain

  8. The Historian

Deepthi Welaratna
Previous

Episode 8 of In A Walled City Out Now