All-American Ruins: Sunset Town

Blake Pfeil (US 2024)

6 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 Jakob Ahlbom, Anna Dager, Hanna Ekström, Sarah, the Illstrumentalist

Follow the series

---

The Ecco: Margery

Sara Zarreh Hoshyari Khah (DE 2024)

8min

What happens if someone finds your autobiography and republishes only very specific parts? And what if that almost ends up being the only version? A story about a selective monk, a lucky pingpong match and a woman who's not afraid to cry in public.

THE ECCO is an international non-commercial initiative designed to tug at the boundaries of the world of audio storytelling, journalism, and documentary work. We bring together talents in different parts of the world — journalists, sound designers, audio producers, sound artists, & writers— all united by a common goal: to push themselves and each other out of their work-related comfort zones and explore the different shapes audio documentaries can take, where they may intersect with art and what the impact of such playful exploration can have.

This was made during an immersive retreat where a curated group of talents collaborate, experiment, and support each other in crafting audio projects that are as diverse as they are profound

Producer: Sara Zarreh Hoshyari Khah

---

The Ecco: Space

Lena von Holt (DE 2024)

7 min

Lena von Holt usually doesn’t sing. But since she started hearing people sing everywhere, she felt challenged to sing, too. So she tried, again.

THE ECCO is an international non-commercial initiative designed to tug at the boundaries of the world of audio storytelling, journalism, and documentary work. They bring together talents in different parts of the world — journalists, sound designers, audio producers, sound artists, & writers— all united by a common goal: to push themselves and each other out of their work-related comfort zones and explore the different shapes audio documentaries can take, where they may intersect with art and what the impact of such playful exploration can have.

This was made during an immersive retreat where a curated group of talents collaborate, experiment, and support each other in crafting audio projects that are as diverse as they are profound

Produced by Lena von Holt

---

We Will Not Stop, We Will Not Rest

Melanie Marich and Sajina Shrestha (US 2024)

7 min

The CUNY Gaza Solidarity Encampment lasted almost a week before the police were sent in. Reporter Melanie Marich and Sajina Shrestha were at the encampment for all of its six days, interviewing protestors, collecting tape, and witnessing the night of the arrests from both inside (Marich) and outside (Shrestha). This audio piece is a documentation of the encampment, as a whole, from start to finish.

Produced by Melanie Marich, Sajina Shrestha
Edited by Kalli Anderson
Engineered by Chad Bernhard

---

Empty Clouds: The Waking

Patrick McNameeKing (US 2024)

8 min

Nancy, 77, shares the words she lives by, and the story of her enduring love of poetry.

Produced by Patrick McNameeKing
Music by Patrick McNameeKing

Follow the series

---

Citadel: Building Bridges Through Music

Alan Meaney (IRE 2024)

45 min

Citadel is a group of musicians formed at the Kinsale Road Accommodation centre in Cork city, Ireland in 2018, who refuse to be put down by the system. They are from different countries, such as Burundi, South Africa, DR Congo, Angola and Tanzania.

The musicians perform songs from home, accompanied by rhythms and tunes from around the world. Citadel have played many concerts around Ireland and help to build bridges with the Irish community through their music. Some of the musicians are refugees, others are newly arrived International Protection Applicants. They all speak different languages, but music is their universal language.

‘Citadel: Building Bridges Through Music’ is a documentary that explores the different stories of band members, how they came to be refugees in Ireland and the difficulties they face here. The founders of the band; Roos and Norbert speak about how they started the band and a not for profit organisation, International Community Dynamics. In June 2023, International Community Dynamics hosted ‘The Festival of Belonging’ in the Triskel Arts Centre in Cork. With poetry, spoken word, a conversation cafe, an art exhibition by refugee and Traveller artists and a conference on belonging at University College Cork, it was a busy weekend. The highlight of the weekend was a performance by Citadel.

The documentary follows the band in the buildup to their performance, taking in rehearsals and nerves before they take to the stage on the night. Citadel raises awareness and spreads joy, peace and understanding by sharing their music with each other and with the Irish community and this is reflected in the programme.

Produced and presented by Alan Meaney
The contributors are Roos Demol, Neziswa Mali, Daniel Motaung, Esmeraldo Tavares, Gloria Zulu, Tshoko Music, Phindile Moloi, Jason De Wet, Norbert Nkengurutse, Dr. Debora Kayembe, Elton Sibanda, Joanna Dukipati, Layali Al Fan Band.

The programme was funded by the Coimisiún na Meán with the television licence fee.

---

Not Enough Sun

Radio Worksop (KE 2024)

22 min

It was May of 2023 and Musana was on a romantic getaway in Kenya with her girlfriend. It quickly turned somber when Uganda's President, Yoweri Museveni, signed the Anti-Homosexuality Act into law. Now what? Should Musana make a new life in Kenya or risk returning home? On the one-year anniversary of the Act, Musana reflects on her decision. This is the first in a two-part series on LGBTQ+ rights in Uganda.

Produced by Radio Workshop (Rob Rosenthal, Dhashen Moodely, Jo Jackson, Qhamani Sambu, Mike Rahfaldt)
Hosted by Lesedi Mogoalhe

Follow the series

---

Where@bouts - Episode 001 - Resale Records

Mad Genius (US 2015)

3min Episode 1 of 13

Where@bouts is the art "popcast" that remixes the world. Found sound addicts Mad Genius build stories linked to a location's ambience. Our guests conduct their world like a song.

Resale Records is a used vinyl store in Madison, Wisconsin. Owner Eric Teisberg opened shop in the late '70s, using a Quonset hut that once housed a car repair business. Nearly 40 years later, Eric looks back on his work and life with a frank assessment toward our changing relationship with music.

Producer: Mad Genius

Follow the series

---

Historicity Tokyo - NEO-TOKYO 1: Seamy Dives and Corporate Towers

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

Follow the series

---

XMTR Radio Hour Ep29: Lowlines

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

Follow the series

---