Meet Roy Burdine, Creator of the Mindraker: Background Anger Podcast
By: Arielle Nissenblatt
Each of us has a unique and tailored relationship to our favorite podcast or audio story, and that’s what Roy Burdine, creator of the podcast Mindraker: Background Anger, finds most compelling about the format.
Mindraker is a sci-fi/mystery podcast that follows Maru, a psychic soldier, as he protects mankind from alien invaders who have permeated the collective Unconscious. Mindraker borrows from the lyrical tradition of music and uses immersive sonic techniques to engage with audiences, creating for a transcendental auditory experience unlike any other. The podcast stars Sean Schemmel, a prolific animation and video games voice actor most known for his work as Goku in Dragon Ball Z, as well as Pokemon, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Yugioh Gx, and Lego Monkie Kid.
We caught up with Burdine to discuss how Mindraker: Background Anger came to be.
Roy Burdine on the Podcast Mindraker: Background Anger
Arielle Nissenblatt: Could you tell us about the inspiration behind creating the Mindraker: Background Anger podcast and how the concept came to you?
Roy Burdine: Mindraker is the result of several inspirations coming together. The podcast format comes from my love of audio — music, radio, podcasting, audiobooks, you name it, going all the way back to the time I was a kid sitting in my room staying up all night drawing. I was instantly fascinated with the possibilities when podcasting came about, but it was years before I figured out what form that would take for me.
AN: What challenges did you face while transitioning from visual animation to the audio format of a podcast?
RB: The biggest challenge for me was technical. Writing, recording, and directing voice talent is a part of my job, but exciting sound design and mixing are not things I can do myself, especially for the kind of immersive soundscape I was looking to create. For it to work, I was going to need someone who not only had those talents but also got my vision. Fortunately for me I found a gentleman named Mark Labib, an editor and sound designer from Belgium who fell in love with the show and really understood from a technical level what I was going for. Mark’s contribution to the show is as important as mine and Sean’s.
AN: Why a podcast for this kind of story? Why was it uniquely suited to audio?
RB: I built the content around the format — I started with the desire to create a podcast that I felt would take advantage of the unique properties of an audio presentation. Audio is closely associated with the mind and deep thought — as the mind creates the pictures from the audio stimulation. This led me to a story about the subconscious mind, and a unique narrative approach to telling the story that in both how I create that narrative, and how it affects the listener, comes directly from the subconscious.
AN: Can you share some insights into your creative process when developing the storyline and characters for the podcast?
RB: I have had a very particular kind of writing style in my mind for years, but I couldn’t quite figure out how to make it work. Then in 2017 I decided to learn transcendental meditation. Almost as soon as I began meditating on a regular basis the words just started flowing. At first, I was just writing in the stream of consciousness prose you hear in the show. Strangely enough, the words came first, then the story the words were telling began to reveal itself to me. I had wanted to do a dramatic podcast for years but wasn’t sure exactly what it should be. After I’d done quite a bit of writing it just hit me one day that this is my podcast!
AN: How did you ensure that the podcast's atmosphere and tone captured the essence of your vision? Could you elaborate on the role of sound design and its significance in immersing the audience in the story?
RB: Sound design is the key to making the show work. Something I had in mind when I decided to make a podcast was that it should have the sonic and lyrical qualities of a music album — in the way we think of something like Pink Floyd’s The Wall where the music and lyrics tell a story. This would make the show something more than just a radio play but elevate it to a level that could be listened to again and again because of its pleasing immersive sonic quality, and the words that play like lyrics, connecting with the listener on a deeper subconscious level, and whose meaning can expand and change with each listen.
AN: What aspects of podcast production did you find most challenging, and how did you overcome them?
RB: I think the most challenging part is being the one with vision — having to find all the elements and pull them together and follow it through to the end. On the technical end I was blessed with very few challenges.
AN: In an age of visual storytelling, what advantages do you find in the audio format for conveying complex emotions, suspense, and character development?
RB: I think the advantage of audio is that we have the chance to engage the listener on a deeper level, one where their own experiences, their individual relationship to words and sound takes over to create a very personal interpretation. This is the connection I’m talking about when I say the relationship to the podcast can be more like listening to Pink Floyd’s The Wall than watching a film. Audio format is also listened to in a more personal setting — you take it with you in your headphones wherever you are in life. While the visual cortex is experiencing one reality — example: driving to work listening in the car — the auditory cortex, feeding directly into the mind, is experiencing a whole other reality. These overlapping experiences create something unique that no other art form can. You’ll see this reflected in Mindraker where two realities, the waking and the unconscious are transposed over one another.
AN: What podcasts do you take inspiration from?
RB: Some recent favorites are 12 Ghosts, Listening In, Blackout, and Rabbits — past favorites include Welcome to Night Vale, The Black Tapes and a perennial favorite is X-Minus One (Classis science fiction radio drama with stories by Ray Bradbury, Philip K. Dick, Robert Heinlein and more).
You can find and listen to Mindraker: Background Anger wherever you get your podcasts.
