Transmissions
Limbo Calling: Ep.1 ~ Fear Swim
Pete Hazel (UK 2024)
Pete Hazell (UK 2024)
20min
In this new series from Limbo Tapes, mysterious recordings from the Radio Limbo archives have been carefully restored. They reveal a curious world of voices, sounds and music through the dispatches of a solitary, unnamed radio operator.
Episode 1. Controversial water-based event “Fear Swim” is something of a nightlife myth. Founder & promoter Shirley Eelsworth reveals in an interview some of the backstory to this famous nightmare swimming party.
The Operator also reflects on a troubling visitation experience (see prologue) and enjoys a piece of music about a Crocodile's daughter.
Produced by Pete Hazell
Theme music by Alex Lupo. "Please Mr Crocodile" by Titus 12. with contributions from Sean Lee and Karen Dews.
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Ghost Wolf
Joan Schuman (US 2023)
Joan Schuman (US 2023)
13 min
The sovereignty of bodies is conjectured through a shuffle of voices across the scaffold of hollow spaces—the mouth, pelvis; curled fists and open heart.
These voices spin and blur into an invitation to listen beyond the exacting stories we find comfort in. Imagine the wolf, hunted almost to extinction across centuries in the U.S. and their ever-strident returns. We fear them as we conjecture dreamscapes from their howls.
These spectral creatures and their autonomous nations fiercely compel some communities to seek their annihilation; others strive for management.; some are satisfied in the certainty of their hidden slinking. It’s a mirror to contemporary political dogfights over bodily dominion, of conviction and control. In a poetic mix of voices, in the barely sung utterance, in barking and yipped snarls, there’s a swirl of imaginary wolves inside the body’s cavities.
There’s also an urgency to stray across landscapes of narrative around fears and survival. We contend with a tension of opposites. The same person who absolutely values the sovereignty of reproductive rights for women might be the person who falls easily to the sway of another faith—a solid belief in government control of disease and culture, bodies and politics, scientific literacy and objectivity.
Like the metaphor of unseen wolves, there is a trope of hysteria that is palpable depending on the bodies and the faith in them. Can these disparate stories about sovereignty be open to debate? Felt in the body itself? Formed in another kind of skulking, a striding low across the loamy, forest floor?
Written, vocalized and composed by:: Joan Schuman
XMTR Radio Hour Ep24 : Tapes and Time
Social Broadcasts (UK 2023)
Produced by Social Broadcasts (UK 2023)
60 min / Episode 24 of 24
This Transmitter Radio Hour is an ode to tapes and time, featuring Glasgow based sound artist Steve Urquhart’s Doing Bird a mixtape recorded with inmates at Perth Prison (Scotland), a meditation on time by Brighton based composer and sound artists Joseph Wilkinson and a wonky plunderphonic mixtape by Bristol based Limbo Tapes.
1. Radio producer and sound artist Steve Urquhart worked with inmates at HMP Perth engage with archive birdsong and oral history recordings from the Scottish Ornithologists’ Club in a unique, creative audio art collaboration.
You can listen to side B of Doing Bird here
2. Joseph Wilkinson is a composer, sound designer and audio artist based in Brighton, exploring the relationship between sound and our inner worlds. He collaborates with his wife and creative partner Cam Brandow as Farfar Studio, their combined channel for enchanting experiences through bespoke music, sound, and storytelling.
I sit in the shade is a short form documentary that is a meditation on time, our relationship to it, and the world around us. A mix of introspection, interviews with thoughts from authors, thinkers and tree-people.
3. Side B of Limbo Tapes is from a compilation of sounds made for monthly show Radio Limbo on Noods Radio, which is the flagship for cassette label, Limbo Tapes, a collaboration between Pete Hazell and Sean Lee.
You can hear side A of Limbo Tapes here
Produced by Lucia Scazzocchio
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This is... Radio Limbo
Pete Hazel (UK 2023)
Pete Hazell (UK 2023)
24min / Part 1 of 2
Radio Limbo has been a resident show on Bristol's Noods Radio since 2018, bringing its alluring hour of music and sampling to monthly Sunday evenings. To mark this 5 year milestone, the show makes a return to tape format, and another compilation of selected highlights.
“This Is… Radio Limbo” is a gathering of its various hallucinated skits, sketches, recycled radio collage, music edits and dramatised sampling, across two 24 minute tape sides. Alongside the show’s carefully curated music, these oddities give Radio Limbo Its reputation for a unique listening experience. Adventurous, strange and dope.
Produced by Pete Hazell
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Eggblood
Mouth In Foot (UK 2020)
Mouth In Foot (UK 2020)
39 min
Teetering on a tripwire between the Priest and the Para-Medicinal Urinal, this work of recorded material plundered between 2018/20, composed September(21) during a locked in covid syndrome. Incorporating inter personal archive spanning 25 years of ripped and clipped sounds, real-time recordings, covert mobile conversations and live synth.
This audio work focuses on memory, nostalgia, psychosis, faith and satire, pushing and pulling the process of sampling, collage, cutup techniques and repetition into shattered fragments from some knackered audio pen-womb-man-ship shape shift...
Originally broadcast on Radiophrenia 2020
Produced by Mouth In Foot
What's Rangoon To You Is Grafton To Me
Russel Guy (AUS 1978)
Russell Guy (AUS 1978)
45 min
What's Rangoon to you is Grafton to me, a psychedelic road journey from Brisbane to Sydney written by Russell Guy and featuring the voices of James Dibble and Russell Guy. The story is a quintessentially Australian gonzo rant, tracing the narrator's twisted journey down the East coast of Australia. He was the perfect hitch-hiker: entertaining but mute in all the right places.
Back in the 1970s, ABC veered off the beaten path with a new experiment: Double J—a youth-oriented radio channel operating on a derelict AM transmitter in a bomb shelter. One of the channel's more live-wire DJs was a surfer-poet called Russell Guy. His crazed, ad-lib breakfast shows broke all the rules of broadcasting. In 1978, Guy decided to see if he could turn a short story about a summer hitch-hiking adventure from Brisbane to Sydney into a radio play. What's Rangoon to You is Grafton to Me ultimately went on to become a cult classic.
Written by Russell Guy
Narrated by James Dibble
Produced by Graham Wyatt
Chop 10
Tarikh Korula (US 2005)
Tarikh Korula (US 2005)
4min
Exploiting the techniques of current commercial radio practice, <em>Chop 10</em> re-mixes a live, dynamic assemblage of commercial radio streams as a commentary on the current state of regulated radio. As "Chop 10" moves from one Arbitron-rated Top Ten radio station in New York City to the next, the hyper "scan" makes it impossible to discern any single station's content, resulting in a jumpy, never-ending parody of commercial radio.
Producer: Tarikh Korula
In The Dark Bristol: The Radio Limbo Creation Story
Pete Hazell (UK 2022)
Pete Hazell (UK 2022)
5 min
In The Dark Bristol - New Producers
A collage piece playing with the contrast between the idea of Godly creation and the often overbearing presence of commercial materialism.
As well as highlighting the absurdity of radio advertising and outdated children’s records, the purpose is simply to promote the radio show's identity and its sense of humour. It concludes with an example of the 7th day being intended for rest, with a reimagined old time radio drama about listening to a broken radio on a Sunday, which in itself contains subversive messages and frustration.
Pete Hazell is a music and radio producer from Bristol, founder of the cassette label Limbo Tapes and host of Radio Limbo.
Producer: Pete Hazel
You Only Guide Me By Surprise: Tape S-1-12
Landry Ayres US 2022)
Landry Ayres (US 2022)
20 min
Described as a suite of sonic somnambulism for those interested in poetry, peripety, magic or mystery. A guided meditation through committee or a dive into hypnosis through a clever plunderphonic escapade of 10 self help tapes from the 70's and 80's.
Producer: Landry Ayres
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Miss Time
Dinabird (FR/UK 2011)
Dinahbird (UK/FR 2011)
4 min
Miss Time, pays homage to the first speaking clocks born in the early 1930s, who were in fact telephone switchboard ladies, chosen for their fine elocution and stamina, who every 15 seconds, 240 times an hour, mechanically told the time to an invisible audience, regardless if anyone called or not. Each country had it's telephone diva, known for her golden voice and accurate timekeeping. Sadly these marathon performances fizzled out in the sixties when technology made these Time Ladies redundant.