Transmissions
In The Dark: The Everything Is Fine Forecast
Ewan Cameron (UK 2022)
Ewan Cameron (UK 2022)
7 min
The Shipping Forecast but it's you having a panic attack.
Produced and performed by Ewan Cameron as part of an ongoing podcast called Randomly Generated Thought.
Selected as part of a new producers listening event be In The Dark
In The Dark: Static Winter - 83 and The Visitation
Pete Hazell (UK 2021)
Pete Hazell (UK 2021)
10 min
Somewhere in a remote outpost, amongst foul weather and radio static, a lone operator scans the bleak signals and reports his findings to HQ.
But why isn't HQ responding?
Is something trying to visit the outpost?
And Who's Leonard?
Improvised and sound designed by Pete Hazell
Selected as part of a new producers listening event be In The Dark
Soundworlds: Town Is By The Sea
Soundworlds (CA/UK 2022)
Anna Rheingans / Joanne Schwartz / Patrick Eakin Young (CA/UK 2022)
19 min
An audio picture book conjuring impressions from a childhood spent in the coastal mining communities of Nova Scotia. We follow Davey as he describes his daily routine: from waking up with the sea sparkling outside his window, to playing with his friends, buying groceries for his mother, and visiting his grandfather’s grave. Throughout the day, his thoughts keep returning to his father, working in the coal mines deep beneath the town.
Soundworlds is not just a podcast. It’s an audio stage for diverse stories told in extraordinary ways. It’s a place for an exciting new form of audio drama that we call sonic theatre. Created by musicians, writers, theatre-makers and sound artists, sonic theatre pieces are more than radio plays. They’re immersive sound worlds, intoxicating blends of music and storytelling, sound design, documentary and fiction.
Directed by Patrick Eakin Young
Music composed and performed by Anna Rheingans
Sound design and mixing: Ross Flight
Text by Joanne Schwartz, adapted from her 2017 book with illustrator Sydney Smith
The Painting
Neil Sandell (CA 2019)
Neil Sandell (CA 2019)
9 min
This we much we know. The woman in the portrait is wearing pearls, leaning forward, smoking a cigarette. But the rest is unknown – who she was, her relationship with an unknown artist. It is open to speculation. This absence of information invites those who see her to project their own stories onto her. She is like a mirror. Knocked off balance by the painting, the narrator ponders what lies behind his obsession with the woman in the portrait. He revisits an upheaval in his life and a stark truth that he has been avoiding.
Writer/Narrator: Neil Sandell
Producers: Neil Sandell with Mira Burt-Wintonick, Cristal Duhaime & Sarah Geis Sound Design: Mira Burt-Wintonick & Neil Sandell
Selected by guest curator, sound artist and podcast producer Cristina Marras
“I find this piece fascinating yet disquieting for the way in which it manages to embody absence, making us feel all the melancholy of not knowing, that transcends the search for information on the object at the centre of the narration, to become subtle nostalgia, a sensation well known to all expats around the world.”
Cassie and Corey: I Need Jam Now
Chris Hogg (UK 2020)
Chris Hogg (UK 2020)
13 min Episode 1 of 6
Cassie and Corey is a Drum & Bass Musical Podcast About Eating Disorders
It’s the night before his gastric-band operation and Corey is terrified. He’s 16 years old, weighs 300 pounds and has a BMI of 60*. However, if Corey doesn’t have the operation, his hypertension will literally make him blind. None of this stops him from stealing, in the dead of night, an electric motor-scooter from the hospital. He picks up his best friend Cassie, a recovering anorexic. Like Corey, Cassie has found solace in the jungle beats and liquid rhythms of D’n’B and they toast together all. the. time.
Music by GTA – Girls Take Action Music
Written by Chris Hogg
Produced and Directed by John Wakefield and Jeremy Mortimer
Featuring Tuwaine Barrett , Harriet Main, Yinka Awoni, Jude Akuwudike
Listen to the series
If I Go Missing the Witches Did It : Do Not Die First
If I Go Missing the Witches Did It (US 2021)
Pia Wilson for Realm (US 2021)
28 min Episode 1 of 9
When a Black writer goes missing, a white podcast host with a saviour complex takes up the cause of finding her and collides with a coven of influencers she suspects are responsible. After a summer in Westchester soaking up how the other half lives, Jenna Clayton has vanished without a trace. The only clue, a set of voice memos detailing an investigation into a group of influencers she suspected were using magic to achieve their means. Elise Edgerton is outraged that no one has found Jenna yet, and decides to take up the cause. But despite believing she is using her platform for good, Elise’s mission threatens to turn her into an even worse villain than a witch: a white saviour.
Written by Pia Wilson
Starring Gabourey Sidibe
Voiced by Sarah Natochenny and Tiana Camacho.
Produced by Realm Media
Listen to the series
Suspense : The Hitch-Hiker
Suspense The Hitch-Hiker (US 1942)
Mercury Theater (US 1942)
29 min Episode 45 of 52
The Audio equivalent of a black and white matinée film, narrated by a young Orson Welles. (Citizen Kane) We are pulled in with the question; Who doesn't like a good ghost story? No blood or gore, just a shocker, a thriller, a real Orson Wells story. Sometimes you want your heart to be warmed and sometime you want your spine to tingle.
Wells plays the protagonist Ronald Adams who comes across a mysterious hitchhiker as he drives across the States in his Buick. This radio play takes the listener to another era but the production is so good - and to think this was all done live!
There’s even a Patreon style plea at the end to Mrs and Mrs American working man and woman to lend Uncle Sam a dime to help win the war against the Nazis. It’s revelatory.
And if you’e never heard the original War of the Worlds by H G Wells, it’s really worth a listen (Also produced by the Mercury Theatre)
Produced and Directed by William Sphere
Scored by Bernard Herman
Narrated by Orson Welles
Produced for The Mercury Thearter
Listen to the series
The Nami Podcast : Of Those In The Darkness
The Nami Project (GHAN 2020)
The Nami Project (GHAN 2020)
9 min Episode 5 of 8
The Nami Podcast is an anthology podcast of lightly dramatised stories and poetry by West African writers bridging the cultural gap between oral narration of stories and writing.
In this tale Sierra Leonian writer Victor Forna gathers elements of a world that existed long before ours, telling a tale of forgotten beings, deceit and betrayal.
Written by Victor Forna
Narrated by Tsidi
Produced by The Residence Studio
Listen to the series
Don’t Think About The White Polar Bear: Season 3, Ep 1 of The Family Tree
Dave Pickering (2019)
Produced by David Pickering & Adam Thwaite (UK 2019)
54 min
When podcast producer Dave Pickering is approached by his dad with a mystery from the life of a long-forgotten friend, he decides to investigate it in the only way he knows how: by having conversations. Mark Sullivan, who went missing 15 years ago, has been found dead. His body still has the arm he should have lost in a car accident and seems to have died eight years before he disappeared.
Here we are deep into the series but it’s a good place to suspend disbelief and get a taste for this bizarre story and to meet some of the characters. This should peak your curiosity to go back to the beginning where Dave speaks to his dad and brother and decides to investigate this mystery.
Written and produced by Dave Pickering and Adam Thwaite
Listen to the whole series
The Lost Carnival Ep 1 : A Present From The Past
Geoff Bird (UK 2015)
Geoff Bird (UK 2015)
23 min Episode 1 of 5
Arthur Bird a radio documentary maker (Geoff Bird), discovers a mysterious parcel that leads him to investigate the incredible story of a carnival lost in time.
This series was the clever audio accompaniment to real live circus performances in Dunham Massey known for its historical links to the mystery and magic of the circus.