Transmissions
The Gold Line 2026
Dinahbird (FR 2026)
Dinahbird (FR, 2026)
27 min
High-frequency trading uses complex algorithms to scan multiple markets and execute orders in microseconds, demanding the fastest, most direct links between exchanges. In 2012 traders began using microwave radio networks, relayed by antennas on tall, often unnoticed structures, to send data between the New York Stock Exchange’s data centre in Mahwah, New Jersey, and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange in Aurora, West Chicago, in about 4.01 milliseconds along a route insiders call the Gold Line.
Sound artists Dinah Bird and Jean-Philipe Renoult, fascinated by these antennas and the paths they forge, have been documenting the physical routes the money makes since 2016.
In 2018 they made a ‘slow’ high frequency road trip along the Gold Line that took 6 weeks. Following towers in the Allegheny mountains of rural Pennsylvania, past Amish homesteads, through the flat plains of Ohio and past the immaculately mowed lawns of Indiana, they made extensive location recordings, both next to the antennas and by tuning into their frequencies over the airwaves.
This is an invitation to the listener to reimagine the movement of money. What exactly does this sound like? We hear the static pops and dissonant hums of radio signals intercut with the wind blowing in the antenna wires and the whirring of huge ventilation systems as we drive along Interstate 80. The road trip is punctuated by interventions from experts such as sociologist Donald Mackenzie who tells us how HFT works and just who takes part in these 'speed races'.
With contributions from : Donald Mackenzie, Alex Pilosov, Night Owl and Stéphane Tyc.
All recordings and music byBird & Renoult
Produced by Dinah Bird and Jean-Philippe Renoult
A Social Broadcast for BBC Radio 3’s Between The Ears
Diana Deutsch's Phantom Words
Gabrielė Griciūtė and Andrius Mack Allosci (LT 2025)
Gabrielė Griciūtė and Andrius Mack Allosci (LT, 2025)
7 min
Diana Deutsch's Phantom Words is the 3rd track of Allosci's debut album Alloscillating, which was released on the 14th of April 2026.
Allosci is a Vilnius/Berlin-based experimental electronic music duo that is heavily rooted in found sound. Their compositions usually have a conceptual field recording foundation, however, for this track the duo worked with material found in a brilliant book they discovered in a charity shop in the UK. The book is called Musical Illusions and Phantom Words by Prof. Diana Deutsch. It is full of all sorts of different auditory phenomena, illusions and detailed explanations of how the human brain works. How human perception can sometimes be quite easily manipulated and tricked. With the author's permission, Allosci took Diana Deutsch's explanation of one of the illusions she invented (Phantom Words) and made a composition interpreting it. The illusion works by having two offset word fragments looping hard panned in a wide stereo field. Even though the fragments are nonsensical, after a while, the human brain starts trying to interpret them into words in all sorts of different languages and accents. Interestingly, sometimes people tend to hear words that are meaningful to them. The music of the track plays with prosody and explores human perception, by sometimes playing fragments of distant human voice recordings and manipulated ambiences, presented in an experimental electronic music context.
Field recordings, music, mix and master by Andrius Mack and Gabrielė Griciūtė
"Phantom Words" auditory illusion invented and explained by Prof. Diana Deutsch
Audio excerpt from Musical Illusions and Phantom Words (Prof. Diana Deutsch)
Listen to the whole album
Portland Dreams
Susanne Lambert (DE, 2025)
Susanne Lambert (DE, 2025)
4 min
Suzi Lamb first visited Portland in the early 2000’s, as part of a DIY west coast tour with a band from her, (at the time) home of Brighton UK.
When she saw the option to work with a piece of Portland audio for this latest Cities and Memory project, something resonated, connecting me to the idea of distance between then and now in my own life, and that of her bandmates. That sense of how things move forward, inevitably, but that an aspect can also remain, that can be conjured up, and reconnected with, like a talisman or a map.
Sonically, she was drawn to create a piece consisting of several distinct movements, utilising a broad range of sounds, and a narrative that draws in the listener. She welcomed in happenstance, and several aspects came about by what my former A’level art teacher would refer to as ‘a happy accident’, including some of the vocal work between Suzi and collaborator Nicky Rushton - these were nice surprises, and Ishe kept them in the final piece.
Elsewhere, she used small sections of the original recording, sometimes rhythmically, others atmospherically, and at others to inform melodic phrasing.
She called the work ‘Portland dreams’ in reference to the original audio, and in the way that a dream is a kind of memory, but can also be a vision for the future. Portland, or rather, the symbolism of Portland, can still be that place full of possibilities and freedoms she experienced for the first time back then, despite all the many changes in the world and herself since.
Produced and composed by Suzi Lamb
Main voice and voice recording Nicky Rushon.
Five and Twenty to Eleven
Pete Hazell (UK 2026)
Pete Hazell (UK 2026)
3 min
Inspired by a serendipitous late night listen, this was made for a recent In The Dark event in Bristol. The event was subtitled: The Sleepwalker's Guide To The City, featuring audio work by Dinah Mullen and Michelle MacMahon.
Late one night on the run up to the event, Pete stumbled across a BBC production of "Rope"By Patrick Hamilton, in which Rupert Cadell (played by Alan Rickman) delivers a melancholy monologue that focuses on the city at night.
It was just the kind of thing he was looking for and this resulting piece opened the second half of the event, held at The Wardrobe Theatre.
Produced by Pete Hazell.
Music by Dive Reflex Service
XMTR Radio Hour #41: Sounding Colossus
Social Broadcasts (UK 2026)
Produced by Social Broadcasts (UK 2026)
67 min / Episode 41 of 41
This XMTR Radio Hour is a little different. Lucia speaks to Garry Hunter the director of arts and heritage organisation Fitzrovia Noir - and composer/violinist Jack Campbell about a new commission from the educational foundation that has grown out of the Tommy Flowers community pub in Poplar, East London. The pub’s namesake Tommy Flowers designed and built Colossus, the world’s first programmable electronic computer, to help decipher the encrypted messages sent by the German High Command during WW2. 23-year-old composer and musician Jack M.Campbell has recently written and extensively performed a piece inspired by Alan Turing’s Bombe. With a bursary from TFF, he has now composed a score responding to Colossus, the computer built by Tommy Flowers to greatly expedite the reading of Lorenz traffic. The code was cracked by mathematician Bill Tutte, who, after the war, went on to teach at two universities in Canada, Jack’s home country. Following the conversation about outsiders, music, algorithms and maths, is an exclusive rendition of this composition: ‘Colossus’ by Jack Campbell.
XMTR Radio Hour Produced by Lucia Scazzocchio
Follow the series
Instrumental Romance
Kim David Bots (NL 2025)
Kim David Bots (NL 2025)
45 min
In 2023, while walking with his dog friend Miemel, Kim found a CD in the river Maas near Maastricht. The CD was clearly unplayable, but its title still readable; Instrumental Romance. It felt like a question from a not so distant past. What is romance as an instrument? Romance instrumentalized? At the same time he was experimenting with text to speech voices and recognized something that you could call an instrumentalized form of romance. These voices 'work' because they use pauses, timbres and intonation your ear recognizes as human. At the same time they can’t convince completely. In them exists a sort of auditory uncanny valley. From the idea of the uncanny and romantic in sound/music/story he started experimenting and writing and out of it came 'Instrumental Romance’. It consists of a chain of 11 narrative, musical vignettes (some more narrative then others).
Produced and composed by Kim David Bots
39 Alpha, 39 Bravo - The Sound Of Detention’s Economies
Earrational Measures (IT 2025)
Earrational Measures (IT 2025)
10 min
9 Alpha, 39 Bravo tells the story of profit and exploitation within a specific immigration removal centre throughout 1 day, through data sonification.
It is an uncanny journey through the 24 hours of Campsfield House Immigration Removal Centre (near Oxford, UK) in 2016, from the perspective of Pilo Moreno, the co-producer of this track and expert by experience. Pilo guides the listeners through a whole day in Campsfield House, retracing a generic day, a recurring and repeating sequence throughout the 5 months he spent there.
In the background, and as part of the track’s rhythmical backbone, you will hear how much three different characters earned in one day back in 2016: the director of the private corporation managing the removal Centre, the custody officer working in the facility, and a detainee who is employed by the centre for menial duties. All the sounds associated with the incomes of these three social actors were chosen by Pilo.
Through the juxtaposition of data-sonification, haunting sounds and first account narration, the listeners delve into the brutal economies of detention - characterised by extreme exploitation built on processes of dehumanisation which are woven into the daily practices and restrictions of UK Immigration Removal Centres.
The title - "39 Alpha, 39 Bravo"- is an explicit reference to the numbers of the bed Pilo and his cell mate were called by during their time in detention.
Produced by Anna De Mutiis
Music by Pilo Moreno,, Arturo Moreno and Anna De Mutiis:
2025 Selects: Coastal Soundforms : Tymbals and Golden Gallopers, Beach
Andrius Mack (LT 2025)
Andrius Mack (LT 2025)
5 min
Coastal Soundforms is a field recording composition made entirely from acoustic coastal field recordings captured over several years. It features soundscapes from the UK (Dungeness, Camber Sands, Brighton, Bournemouth), Lithuania (Neringa, Palanga), Netherlands (Texel), Portugal (Lisbon, Cascais), Morocco (Taghazout, Mirleft) and Italy (Venice). Sometimes the recordings are presented as faithful sonic representations, sometimes they are heavily manipulated with filters in order to highlight certain features present in the soundscapes. It is an exploration of the contrast between biophonic soundscapes and urban anthrophonies. All set against the backdrop of a relentless, thunderous oceanic geophony.
Produced, recorded, mixed and mastered by Andrius Mack
2025 Selects: I Dream Of Water: The Well, The Bay, The Sea
Susanne Lambert (UK 2025)
Susanne Lambert (UK 2025)
7 min
This is part of a body of work is about people's relationships with water, based around a set of audio recordings from various people Suzanne knows. She asked contributors to share something about a place of water they have strong memories of, or connections to, and to say something about what feelings are evoked in the place.
Susanne set the audio messages within new compositions (including found sounds and field recordings) in different ways to create a series of pieces. She has combined improvised open passages (drums/clarinet/piano/synth) with more considered and formulated sections, in an attempt to echo, mirror and juxtapose the words, and build imagery around the stories shared.
The series will eventually also include factual information, alongside the personal connective elements, as an opportunity to examine the diverse and sometimes contradictory elements of our human relationship to water.
Produced by Susanne Lambert aka Suzi Lamb
Seven Minutes, Seven Years
Anna Van Dine (US 2024)
Anna Van Dine (US 2024)
7 min
As long as Anna has been interested in sound and documentary, she has recorded things. What does it sound like when you take seven years' worth of recording and condense it into seven minutes? What does time sound like? What does memory sound like?