4. Dissonance

November 2, 2018·22 min·1 clip

Composer Kat explains why the Catholic Church banned the tritone — the most dissonant interval in Western music — calling it the devil's tone, and how it sits one half-step from musical perfection on either side.

The episode opens with Kat, a composer and student of physiological sound, explaining the tritone — the diminished fifth, historically banned by the Catholic Church as diabolos in musica — and its proximity to perfect musical intervals. Mark explains that Kat composes under the name Cathars for Catholics and created all the music for Video Palace. He told her about the white tapes and she agreed to analyze the audio. While waiting for Kat to return with a capture card, Tamara confronts Mark about the escalating dangers of his investigation: the tape made him sick twice, a man named Shane nearly assaulted him, and something unexplained happened outside their apartment. Mark dismisses the last incident as unrelated but acknowledges in retrospect he was defensive. Kat returns and captures both tapes using an analog capture card connected to the RCA ports of Mark's old VCR. After an hour of analysis, she presents waveform data and uses an anacrusis as an alignment point to play both tapes together, revealing what sounds like chanting. She then identifies a melody with missing notes across both tapes and concludes there are probably two additional audio sources needed to complete it. Mark calls Jacob Manders, the only other person who knew about the white tapes, to share the findings. Jacob reveals that Video Palace did not merely stock the white tapes — he believes the store in Conway, Vermont actually made them. Jacob mentions he obtained an audio file of Thurman Mueller being interrogated by police in 1994. After converting the outdated PC audio format, Mark listens to the 28-minute recording in which Mueller answers questions about an alleged break-in at the home of a collector named Javier Diaz. Near the end of the tape, Mueller makes a cryptic reference to opening the stacks in the basement and mentions eight doors. The charges are dropped when Diaz's wife withdraws the complaint. Mark and Tamara discuss the reference to the eight doors and conclude they have no choice but to go to the Video Palace themselves.

As heard by us

Music theory opens the door to a more practical, and more unsettling, investigation.

Video Palace folds the tritone lesson into a steady drift of dread, and Kat's explanation keeps the hour pointed at something off. The best stretch is where the theory starts hitting the investigation: the white tapes, the old recording gear, and the uneasy feeling that ordinary…

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Why you'd press play

When music theory starts sounding like a warning, you're already halfway into the chill.

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