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
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
Doing Bird
Steve Urquhart (UK 2022)
Steve Urquhart (UK 2022)
20min Episode 1 of 2
Inmates at HMP Perth engage with archive birdsong and oral history recordings from the Scottish Ornithologists’ Club in a unique, creative audio art collaboration. Peesweeps meet hip hop beats, grouse unlock coded prison language, and an unhatched kestrel chick provokes philosophy.
Engaging with Scotland's archive birdsong recordings encourages the men to recall positive memories, to spark creativity, to reflect on the purpose of prison, and to re-evaluate their connection to the world beyond prison walls. They also think deeply about the accessibility and value of oral history recordings, and about who gets to be involved.
Produced by Steve Urquhart
‘Doing Bird’ is supported by the National Lottery through Creative Scotland.
Onirica
Silvia Malnati (2021)
Silvia Malnati (UK /IT 2021)
15 min
An intimate exploration of the auditory impressions that people experience while dreaming.
Onirica x BBC New Creatives in partnership with ICA London
Producer: Silvia Malnati
Composer: Stefano Galli
Mixing & Sound Designer: Andrea Campisi
Executive Producer: Pierre Vella (SPACE)
Tape Letters: A Cassette Tape Love Story
Modus Arts (UK 2021)
Modus Arts (UK 2021)
15min Episode 3 of 6
Tape Letters shines a light on the practice of recording and sending messages on cassette tapes by Pakistani migrants who settled in the UK between 1960 and 1980. In this six-part documentary we listen to first-hand accounts of these migration stories through original recordings, interviews with their Britain-born families and commentary by Tape Letters founder and director Wajid Yaseen.
This episode features a special story of a soon-to-be-married couple, who got to know each other more deeply and fell in love entirely through sending cassette tapes to each other between Pakistan and the UK for over 5 years. Telephones were usually expensive and not private, which is why cassettes were their chosen method of communication. We also discuss the retention and loss of cassette tapes, and therefore stories, over the years as people either held onto tapes for sentimental or evidential reasons or threw them away as they simply looked to do some spring cleaning.
Presented by Wajid Yassen (Modus Arts)
Production and Sound Design Oliver Sanders
Listen to the series
Radio Ballad: On The Edge (1963)
Ewan McColl, Peggy Seeger, Charles Parker (1963)
Ewan McColl, Peggy Seeger, Charles Parker (UK 1963)
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 explores the lives of teenagers in the 1960’s with voices of young people from all over the UK. If you’ve seen C’mon C’mon where Joaquin Phoenix plays Johnny a radio journalist touring the US to talk to teens, this piece sounds even more ahead of its time.
Producer: Charles Parker
Music: Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger
Listen to more Radio Ballads
Edgeland
Hayley Suviste (UK 2021)
Hayley Suviste (UK 2020)
24 min
As Manchester’s streets and skyline are warped by the ever-accelerating process of urban renewal, the city’s edgelands and green spaces are at risk of being swallowed by waves of property development. Not only does this raise questions about the ecology of the city, as carbon sinks are flattened and wildlife is displaced, but it speaks to broader trends pushing urban residents away from shared space, community and local identity.
This project shines a light on these spaces and the activists, academics, and local people who have taken up the daunting fight against corporate interests in the city in the name of biodiversity, urban ecology and community wellbeing. As we are faced with crises of both environment and mental health, the role of public green spaces has become ever more crucial in the eyes of those who enjoy, nurture, and maintain them
Hayley Suviste is a sound artist and composer based in Manchester (UK). She works with field recordings, archival material, electronic hardware, and live instrumentation to create long-form compositions, sonic installations, and multimedia art projects. Inspired by folk traditions and oral histories, Hayley is interested in the role of sound and voice in constructing and reproducing cultural identities and socio-historical narratives and how new compositional technologies can engage communities with overlooked stories about their environments.
Produced by Hayley Suviste
Commsioned by HCMF
La Cafetera
Labrador Basin (US 2021)
Produced by Labrador Basin (US 2021)
13 min, Episode 7 of 9
From somewhere you know, transmitted to you. Listen in, don’t tell anyone. As fantasy intoxicates reality, observation becomes drowned understanding.
The mysterious Labrador Basin combines field recording archive montage and poetry and with each episode we learn a little more about this allusive artist.
Producer: Labrador Basin
Listen to the series (In Spanish an English)
Submitted to XMTR
Mother In The Fridge
Felix Kubin (DE 2012)
Produced by Felix Kubin (DE 2012)
30 min
What does your own mother sound like in the refrigerator? Felix Kubin tried it. And not only that. His mother also speaks from the cooking pot, the waste bin and a box. And in English, too, because the son not only does acoustic experiments, but also has to practice for a trip abroad. The mother is doing well. From the various containers she gives little lessons in English grammar by phone. An Oedipal burlesque without a script.
Producer: Felix Kubin
Produced for Vicki Bennett’s extensive “Radio Boredcast” project at AV Festival Newcastle, UK.
Recommended by Paris based sound artist Dinahbird
Birds Eye View: Ep1 Making Herstory
Story Projects (AUS 2020)
Produced by Story Projects (AUS 2020)
38 min / Episode 1 of 10
BIRDS EYE VIEW is the culmination of a two-year audio storytelling project run by StoryProjects in the Darwin Correctional Centre. One of a number of public health initiatives designed to minimise alcohol-related harm, the project involved workshops and mentoring in field recording, interviewing, editing, vocal techniques, body percussion, scripting and slam poetry.
Framed by three questions - Who are we really? How did we get here? and Where to next? - project participants documented their memories, reflections and the everyday routines of prison life.
Episode 1: Travel into the Darwin Correctional Centre where you’ll meet Rocket, who has spent most of her adult life in prison, along with a bunch of birds.