Transmissions
Brothers
Giacomo Bagni, (IT 2024)
Giacomo Bagni (IT 2024)
13 min
Giacomo and his father have had a fragmented relationship for years. Then, all of a sudden, a new character appears, replacing Giacomo as a son. Based on the author’s biographical story, Brothers is a trip in his inner world while he tries to understand what happened and make peace with it. A fresh take on autofiction, the piece is constructed by using a mixture of first person narration and re-constructed dialogues from the past, with the author inhabiting and voicing all the characters as a way to materialize his inner discussions and trying to make sense of them.
Written, Produced by Giacomo Bagni
Music by ST.ELVIO
Beautiful Writing
Stella Sims (UK 2024)
Stella Sims (UK 2024)
7 min
Calligraphy is a ancient craft where art, language and words intersect. But in a world of screens, phones and computer-generated fonts, what does calligraphy do for us? Take a journey into the magical world of A to Z as calligraphers explore this question and reveal the joy of letter art and handwriting.
Produced by Stella Sims
The Stone Men of Newcastle
Daniel Hinds (UK 2022)
Daniel Hinds (UK 2022)
14 min
The Stone Men of Newcastle is a sequence of poems told through the eyes of The Commuter, the speaker and poet-figure, as he encounters the statues of Newcastle as part of his daily life working in the city. The sequence takes in Sir Antony Gormley’s vandalised Clasp sculpture, the St George and the Dragon war memorial at Eldon Square, another monument for the First World War, The Response 1914, and the Mercutio statue in Newcastle’s Theatre Royal. The Stone Men of Newcastle concludes with a consideration of the future figures we will immortalise in bronze and stone. The sequence enters into the current debate, typified by the Rhodes Must Fall movement and the toppling of the Edward Colston statue in Bristol, on how we engage with art and history in the form of statues. The statues sometimes co-exist uneasily with their setting: they are surrounded by the distractions of modern life, represent a past impossible to compete with or at odds with our values, and are vulnerable to defacement. Yet, they can also be sources of inspiration, beauty, and connection to the past, sites of contemplation as well as conflict.
Writer Daniel Hinds
Cast: Dan Pyre and Stacey Ghent
Lead Audio Production Partner: Naked Productions
Partners: BBC New Creatives, Tyneside Cinema, Arts Council England, BBC Arts.
I’d Rather Be Swimming
Clair Urbahn (UK 2024)
Produced by Clair Urbahn (UK 2022)
7 min
Produced especially for the XMTR Audio Arts Festival. This is an ode to living by the sea. It's why we are all here so please stop dumping sewage in it Southern Water. Cheers to the fellow swimmers that helped, young and old.
Clair Urbahn, an audio enthusiast since broadcasting at an independent FM station in Wellington NZ (radioactive.fm) moved from NZ to London in 2008, had a hand in setting up NTS Radio (nts.live) and set up pop-up stations when that was a thing. Currently overseeing podcast production and network infrastructure for Brazen (brazen.fm) as Head of Audio.
Producer: Clair Urbahn
Smugglers Song
Mary Cooper (UK 2023)
Produced by Mary Hooper (UK 2023)
4 min
This track is a remix of Kiplings Smugglers Song created for Hastings Country Park as part of Creative Coast Art Geocache Tour.
Producer: Mary Hooper
Read by Cath Cooper
Walking through the submerged forest
Mary Cooper (UK 2023)
Produced by Mary Hooper (UK 2023)
9 min
This piece is composed from field recordings and readings of letters from Bexhill Museum archives, layered to bring to life a part of our eroding coastline and an archive which lies quietly unearthed.
The field recordings were made whilst walking at low tide through pre-historic submerged forest remains, at Bulverhythe in EastSussex. This is layered with field recordings made in nearby woods.
Julian Porter, Rother Museums' curator found photographs and letters in the Bexhill Museum archives relating to the forest, which Actor and Theatre Producer Leigh Shine, read for me in a recording session.
”I hope the piece creates a spirit of place, a sense of timelessness and ever evolving change. The magical experience of walking through thousands of years of human and environmental ebb and flow.”
Producer: Mary Hooper
Channeling
Dan Am (UK 2024)
Dan Am (UK 2024)
7 min
XMTR AUDIO ARTS FESTIVAL is blessed to be framed and mapped by its continued approximation and geolocation to the English Channel. Channeling invites you to stare out into your horizon and tune in further into this oscillating and fluctuating expanse. Channeling is a chance to connect and go somatically deeper whenever you find the opportunity to perch on the many seats, posts and outcrops that are generously dotted along promenade. Your guided medication to pause and come back to throughout the festival. Whenever you want to step into and separate your own signal from noise and dive in deeper.
Channeling comes from a seminal work called 'Hail The Chimaeran' from Dan Am. Dan Am is a sonic ritualist who explores transmuting his anthemic mythic folk into varying and emanating invocations, incantations and initiations. He is based in St Leonards-on-Sea and his work can be tuned into and explored more deeply via all music streaming platforms.
Produced by Dan Am
The Human Jukebox
Stella Sims (UK 2024)
Stella Sims (UK 2024)
7 min
A portrait of Trev ‘The Pianoman’ Woodison, one of the last remaining traditional pub piano players in the UK. He's on a mission to keep the art of pub piano alive. Playing piano in pubs is no ordinary gig: Trev never knows what he's going to play until he turns up on the night, it's up to the audience to choose and for Trev to improvise on the spot. This audio piece invites listeners to join Trev down the pub as he explains what it takes to be a pub piano entertainer.
Produced by Stella Sims and Kiff Frankham
Beast Country: Chapter One
Ewan Cameron (UK 2024)
Ewan Cameron (UK 2024)
17 min
Chapter one of a three-part audio fiction series with elements of folk horror and magical realism.
“Don't let this die. Don't let us die. Because I'll never forgive you if you do.”
Phil Ainsworth is 54 and deeply sad. He is preparing for the annual village Beast Hunt. For hundreds of years, the men of his family have led a march in to the woods in search of a mystical pig-like creature. But for Phil it is a time for reopening old wounds and coming face to face with the reason for all his sadness.
Written, Produced by Ewan Cameron
Application Declined
Alice Foxall (UK 2024)
Alice Foxall (UK 2024)
7 min
A dystopian fiction focusing on themes of race and the benefits system. Sara and Claire meet up over coffee (well, a turmeric-matcha latte) and finally have a decent catch up. But niceties turn sour and lattes grow cold as the government’s new rules on child applications create rifts between old friends.
Written, Produced by Alice Foxall
Actors: Verity De Cala, Ese Osamede
Mixed by Transmission Roundhouse