Transmissions
Awful Grace: The Treachery Of Sounds
Champagne’s Electric US 2017)
The Champagne's Electric (US 2017)
32 min Episode 4 of 13
You’re never told what you’re hearing but through the sounds you have to piece together what it is that is happening. But is it correct? Have we been mislead? The haunting audio work still has me leaning in at the horror of what I’m hearing, a reality in real-time.
Awful Grace remains a mysterious and understated series of sound art, proving that a podcast can be whatever you want it to be.
Produced by The Champagne's Electric. Originally published for the podcast Awful Grace, or The Tolling of the Void Bell.
Listen to the whole series
The Root Of The Matter: Woodland
Mae-Li Evens for Reduced Listening (UK 2022)
Mae-Li Evans for Reduced Listening (UK 2022)
32min Episode 4 of 5
Our lives are intrinsically entangled with the plant world: through the food we eat, the medicines we use, and the spaces we inhabit. In this five-part series, writer and maker JC Niala explores what the plant world has to teach us about being human. Join JC in conversation with growers, scientists, writers and activists on a journey through five different landscapes, from the familiarity of the garden to the seemingly hostile wasteland. We’ll take a closer look at the entanglements and stories underpinning the plant world to understand how plants can provide a lens on human health, history and belonging.
We think of forests and woodlands as wild spaces where we can lose ourselves in nature. They also provide us with a wealth of resources such as food, building materials and medicines. But they are also globally under threat of destruction. In this episode, JC Niala delves into the contradictions in our relationship with woodlands, and explores different ways we can think about them, if we are to use and protect them more wisely.
Lead Producer Alannah Chance
Produced by Mae-Li Evans
Music and sound design by Alice Boyd
The Root of the Matter’ is a Reduced Listening production for Wellcome Collection.
Listen to the series
Voicing The Archive
Hannah Kemp-Welch (UK 2021)
Hannah Kemp-Welch (UK 2021)
29 min
During the pandemic, artist Hannah Kemp-Welch was in-residence at the Women’s Art Library, based at Goldsmiths. Reaching out to community groups in New Cross, Hannah photocopied and collated packs of ephemera from artists' projects documented in the library and posted these to local residents. Seven women selected an artist from the archive and responded to their work, recording personal reflections as they looked through materials. This audio essay considers access to archives, and how voices can bring the Women’s Art Library to life.
Produced by Hannah Kemp-Welch
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.
Producer: Dinahbird
Not Just Any Bush
Helene Thomas (AU 2020)
Helene Thomas (AU 2020)
17 min
Randal Morrison is a third generation Huon Piner. He lives in Strahan, Tasmania. Helene met Randal at his saw mill in Queenstown and as they talked he reminisced about his times as a young boy going out with his father to the banks of the Gordon River to collect Huon Pine logs.
The Wayfinder is a mobile recording studio designed and built in Tasmania. It is a professional sound booth with acoustic insulation properties and has been carefully designed to make people feel comfortable and relaxed and conducive to conversation. It was an idea born from the imagination of its creator, Helene Thomas. Inspiration has been drawn from the US initiative StoryCorps and the BBC’s The Listening Project, where stories are preserved in order to build connections between people.
Produced by Helene Thomas
Radio Ballad: Song of a Road (1959)
Ewan McColl, Peggy Seeger, Charles Parker (1959)
Ewan McColl, Peggy Seeger, Charles Parker (UK 1959)
59 min
This new revolutionary format - radio ballad (BBC) conceived by folk musicians Ewan MacColl, Peggy Seeger, and the brilliant radio documentary maker Charles Parker in 1958, combining sound: songs, instrumental music, sound effects, and, most importantly, the recorded voices of those who are the subjects of the documentary. This had never been done before, and still sounds incredibly fresh today.
This Radio Ballad is a musical journey along the M1 as it was being built in the late 50’s.
Producer: Charles Parker
Music: Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger
Listen to more Radio Ballads
In The Dark: Surveillance
Derick Armah and Ivan d'Avoine (UK 2021)
Derick Armah + Ivan d'Avoine (UK 2021)
9 min
This audio essay is a young Black man’s observations on hyper-visibility in one of the most surveilled cities in the world.
Produced and written by Derick Armah and Ivan d'Avoine for 'The Hidden Part' on Short Cuts BBC Radio 4.
Selected as part of a new producers listening event be In The Dark
In The Dark: So Good So Milo
Ben James (US 2022)
Ben James (US 2022)
10min
Mac and Claudia lived with their parrot Milo for 25 years. The bird talked and whistled to them all day. Then, one day last spring…
Produced by Ben James.
Original music composed and performed by Evan Arntzen.
Selected as part of a new producers listening event be In The Dark
In The Dark: The Brown Student’s Fear
Salman Ahad Khan (US 2021)
Salman Ahad Khan (US 2021)
4 min
This was a story produced in 24 hours for the 2021 KCRW Radio Race and features three delightful perspectives on bidets.
Produced and narrated by Salman Ahad Khan
Selected as part of a new producers listening event be In The Dark
Transformation Through Repetition
James T Green (US 2022)
James T. Green (US 2022)
4 min
What is a home when objects are not present? Jemma Rose Brown meditates on the routines and loops that invisibly cement the identity of a brand new place.