Transmissions
Historicity Tokyo - NEO-TOKYO 1: Seamy Dives and Corporate Towers
historicity (UK 2023)
historicity / Jelena Sofronijevic (UK 2023)
59 min
A series of audio walking tours, exploring how cities got to be the way they are - starting with London and Tokyo.
Sometimes taking an audio tour from your armchair works just as well as being there!
This walk explore how Tokyo has allowed authorities, developers, and people around the world to reimagine what a city might be, in the last fifty years. Discover how Shinjuku has distilled the swirling currents of postwar political economy from transport and towers to nightlife and riots.We start at the entrance to Shinjuku Gyōen, a rural estate converted into a national garden, and near the post station, where sex workers gathered in the early modern period. On the other side of the street is Nichō, where the LGBT community has flourished once the sex workers left. It’s a fitting introduction to the nightlife that flourishes in East Shinjuku, which continues across the road, behind the shops and restaurants on the main drag, which started coming here after the earthquake in 1923. By the late 1960s, Shinjuku was a mecca for young Japanese, drawn here by cutting-edge art and political protest. They soon migrated south, but it wasn’t until the next century that the government started to clean things up, even Kabukichō, where the yakuza controlled the sin. At the heart of Shinjuku, though, is the station – the world’s busiest, currently undergoing a redevelopment, which will take 25 years. On its other side, in West Shinjuku, things are very different. A vast water purification plant has been replaced by corporate towers, capped and culminating in the new Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building, which dominates a deserted people’s plaza. The walk ends in the garden on its far side, from where, once upon a time, you could see Fuji.
Narrated by Angus Lockyer
Produced by Jelena Sofronijevic
XMTR Radio Hour Ep29: Lowlines
Social Broadcasts (UK 2024)
Produced by Social Broadcasts (UK 2024)
60 min / Episode 29 of 29
This XMTR (Transmitter) Radio Hour is dedicated to Lowlines - a sonic scrapbook, a passport to roam, tuning in to the pulse of place, with 2 episodes from this series follows food entrepreneur & urban place-maker Petra Barran as she travels through the Americas, meeting people with profound connections to the places they’re from. We’ll join Petra as she travels from London to New Orleans immersing herself in a Second Line parade and then on to the Amtrak slow train from New Orleans to Arizona connecting with strangers along the way.
Featured:
1. Lowlines Prologue
Petra Barran isa gatherer of people and food on the kerbs of London. She began as a food truck owner, cruising the UK, selling chocolate to any and everyone - and grew a whole multi-pronged street food organisation from there. But as her business took off and gave way to more and more meetings in glass buildings, the energy and genuine, spontaneous human connection that she thrived on started to fade away..
2. Episode 1: Second Line Footwork in New Orleans (excerpt)
New Orleans - the most human city Petra Knows know has to be the first stop on her pull to tune into the pulse of place. It’s the most magnetic of places. Here it feels like the air is thicker, the light has currents in it and the ground is …bouncy. And bubbling up from those streets is the second line, a rolling block party, a neighbourhood parade, a high-voltage current coursing through the city’s veins every Sunday with music, community, freedom and culture. For many Black New Orleanians it’s the day when you own the streets, so you better bring that FOOTWORK
The series kicks off with Petra getting her feet back on the ground at the Ole & Nu Style Fellas parade in the 6th Ward.
3. Episode 3: Trainline: Slow Train to Tucson
The Sunset Limited, Westbound - Fly or take the Amtrak? The journey or the destination? Taking the slow train to Tucson just felt right. You know when your whole body craves a more gentle, almost human tempo to carry you onto the next place? So, whilst keen to get to the wide open desert, the opportunity to stretch out the journey, savour the changing landscape through Louisiana, Texas, New Mexico and Arizona, and have time to meet my fellow passengers was too much of a pull.
In Episode 3 we follow the lowlines of the train tracks and the hiss, groan and gentle gyrations of the 36 hour journey as I talk off-grid living, denture cream woes, magic mushrooms and marrying the same man three times with a raft of fellow travellers - all while trying to get a decent bite to eat and a bit of shut eye.
Narrated by Petra Barran
Produced by Lucia Scazzocchio (Social Broadcasts) and Lina Prestwood (Scenery Studios)
Original score by Hannah Marshal
Mastering by Jobina Tinnemans
XMTR Radio Hour Produced by Lucia Scazzocchio
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What do Sounds Want: Bodies & Spaces
Radio Papesse (IT 2024)
ALMARE and Radio Papesse (IT 2024)
25 min
WHAT DO SOUNDS WANT is a 5-episode podcast about sound and about listening through a series of questions and intuitions Radio Papesse and ALMARE have shared while they working together on Life Chronicles of Dorothea Ïesj S.P.U., a sci-fi film & audio novel written and directed by ALMARE.
EPISODE 1 | Bodies & Spaces The sci-fi audio novel Life Chronicles of Dorothea Ïesj S.P.U. follows the story of researcher Dorothea Ïesj as she extracts and smuggles sound finds from the past. The world she lives in is inspired by pseudo-scientific theories such as archaeoacoustics (developed in the 19th century at the same time as the invention and development of recording technologies) which suggested the possibility of tracing acoustic phenomena of the past that remained “engraved” in matter. In our world, extracting sounds is currently impossible, but plausible and this hypothesis prompts reflection on its consequences in terms of social control and monitoring and these reflections bring to the surface questions about the political dimension of sound in public space.
The first episode of this podcast reflects on some of those questions and on how listening practices may be used as tools for critical thinking and for the tuning and re-tuning of power dynamics.
This is a fascinating audio essay and an excellent introduction for anyone wanting to engage in sound studies and theory behind sound and listening.
Narrated by Carola Haupt
Produced by ALMARE and Radio Papesse
Featuring the voices of Reem Shadid, Juliette Volcler, Giada Dalla Bontà and Brandon LaBelle
Landed - The Family Farm
Farmerama (UK 2021)
Farmerama / Col Gordon and Katie Revell (UK 2021)
30 min
What if we’ve been getting this wrong?” Col Gordon is a farmer’s son from the Scottish Highlands. After a decade away, he’s finally returned to the place that he loves: his family farm. Now, he’s eager to start realising his vision for an agroecological future: a future in which rural areas are alive with culture, many more people work on the land, farms operate in sympathy with nature, and nutritious food is available to everyone in society. But now that he’s back, Col’s starting to wonder whether this vision can be achieved within the existing family farm model. Increasingly, it seems the odds are stacked against farms like his.
Many are struggling to survive, let alone to employ people and deliver good food affordably to local communities. As older farmers retire without succession plans, and their land is amalgamated into large industrial operations, the future of the small family farm looks pretty bleak. As he wrangles with all of this, Col stumbles across something that throws his vision – and his very understanding of farming – into doubt. What does it mean to say that “The family farm is a colonial concept”? And might this jarring idea be the key to understanding the problem – as well as its potential solutions?
Produced by Col Gordon and Katie Revell
Executive Producer Abby Rose
Music by Dagger Gordon and Col Gordon
XMTR Radio Hour Ep28: A swimming event, A Requiem, Toilets, Silence and Salt Beef
Social Broadcasts (UK 2024)
Produced by Social Broadcasts (UK 2024)
60 min / Episode 28 of 28
This XMTR (Transmitter) Radio Hour celebrates works that have been submitted to xmtr.fm over the past year with an episode from Bristol based radio project Limbo Tapes' new podcast Limbo Calling, an exercise in mischief and the mundane from New York based Icelandic composer/sound designer Andrea Kristindottir, Berlin based photographer and audio story teller Miri Berlin takes on a haunting journey from intensive care unit to crematorium and musician and sound engineer Ivan Eastley contemplates silence.
Works featured:
1. Limbo Calling: Fear Swim
Pete Hazel (UK 2024)
https://limbotapes.podbean.com
2. Requiem for a Mother
Miri Berlin (DE 2023)
3. The Peephole
Andrea Kristinsdottir (US/ISL 2023)
4. Silence
Ivan Eastley (UK 2023)
5. Salt Beef and Carrots
Lucia Scazzocchio / Social Broadcasts (UK 2018)
https://soundcloud.com/socialbroadcasts/sets/cherrytree-chronicles
Produced by Lucia Scazzocchio
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All-American Ruins: Sober
Blake Pfeil (US 2023)
Blake Pfeil (US 2023)
15 min
A multimedia travelogue where Blake Pfeil recounts experiences exploring abandoned spaces across the United States and reimagines them through multimodal storytelling.
The cornerstone piece of the project is abandoned: The All-American Ruins Podcast, an award-winning audio series which guides listeners through immersive sonic fantasies, recreating experiences exploring abandoned spaces across the United States and around the world. Along the way, the show asks critical questions about American history and culture, community, capitalism and economics, the environment, and mental health while encouraging folks to activate their imaginations as a tool for healing.
The show was recently featured as an Official Select at On Air Fest in Los Angeles, California. The finale for season two is the most personal journal yet. In the episode, which takes place at an abandoned brewery in Allentown, Pennsylvania, Blake reflects on his journey to sobriety, and how his spiritual connection to abandoned places pulled him through the darkest time in his life
Produced by Blake Pfeil
Music by Indigo Days, Lotus, Joseph Beg, Lama House, and Brett Gregory
Featuring Isabel Wilder, Nik Magill
This is Chicago: The Secret
Supraphonic Studios (US 2023)
Stephen Pate and Ashlie Stevens (US 2023)
35 min
In Near North, a hospital visit reveals a secret second family nearby. Six miles as the crow flies.
This series of short audio portraits from Chicago draws from the long lineage of oral history recording in the city, perhaps inspired by the likes of Studs Terkel and the assumption that everyone has a story if you just ask.
Created and produced by Supraphonic Studios' Stephen Pate and Ashlie Stevens
This I is Made of Paper
The Paris Review (US 2023)
The Paris Review (US 2023)
21 min
Pulitzer Prize winner Sharon Olds discusses sex, religion, and writing poems that "women were definitely not supposed to write,” in an excerpt from her Art of Poetry interview with Jessica Laser. Olds also reads three of her poems: “Sisters of Sexual Treasure” (Issue No. 74, Fall–Winter 1978), “True Love,” and “The Easel.”
Production and Sound Design - John DeLore
The Paris Review
XMTR Radio Hour Ep25 : A Field Trip to Edmonton
Social Broadcasts (UK 2023)
Produced by Social Broadcasts (UK 2023)
60 min / Episode 25 of 25
This show is dedicated to the joyful chaos that is Angel Edmonton in Enfield, North London. Once an industrial hub attracting factory workers and their families, the area has been neglected for decades as factories gave way to warehouses and social housing fell into decay. Today it's a multicultural crossroads undergoing massive redevelopment. Echoes of Angels produced by Social Broadcasts takes us on a trip down the main artery - Fore Street, guided by local residents and business owners.
Echoes of Angels a Social Broadcast by – Lucia Scazzocchio
Commissioned by Fore Street for All
Next we join Enfield People’s Theatre with local producer Soveks Lo behind the scenes of their latest production Bread and Roses - a community play recounting the 1915 Edmonton Rent Strike and the community action (led and won by local women) drawing parallels with the current housing crises.
Produced by Lucia Scazzocchio
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Childcare Voices: Stay and Play
Eva Freeman / On The Record (UK 2023)
Eva Freeman / On The Record (UK 2023)
26 min, Episode 1 of 4
People on the frontline of the childcare crisis share their stories and investigate the historical roots of the problems they face. As they look into the past, will they find solutions to the problems of today? Eva, a single mum, artist and designer talks about stay and plays.
Stay and Plays are often volunteer-run groups, found in church halls. They are places people looking after very young babies and children can go, to play with others, have a cup of tea and a chat, and maybe even make friends. An experienced play facilitator herself, Eva first discovered the value of stay and plays when she was a new parent. They were, she says, life saving and gave her a community that has lasted. If they are so vital, why then does no one talk about them?
Produced by Eva Freeman
Sound design by Hannah Kemp Welch
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