Transmissions
XMTR Festival 26: 30 Words For Mud
Lucy Dearlove (UK, 2026)
Lucy Dearlove (UK, 2026)
28 min
In the old Sussex dialect there are many words for mud, now long out of use. What would it mean to bring them back to life?
Produced by Lucy Dearlove
Originally performed at the 2026 XMTR festival Audio Cabaret in St Leonards on Sea.
XMTR Festival 26: Fading Transmissions from a Republic of Ruins
Blake Pfeil (US 2026)
Blake Pfeil (US 2026)
33 min
“Fading Transmissions from a Republic of Ruins” is an experimental live docu-audio performance and visual exhibition that explores abandoned spaces as sites of memory, disappearance, and lingering transmissions. The piece combines live storytelling, archival tape, and ambient field recordings, manipulated in order to create the feeling of the audience becoming a rogue radio transmission that drifts into America’s historical underbelly. Developed under the banner of the U.K. Press Gazette Future of Media Award nominee Blake Pfeil's acclaimed multimedia travelog “All-American Ruins,” this particular experience journeys into the abandoned Sumner School in Topeka, Kansas — one of the segregated schools central to the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education. Drifting in and out of dreamlike sonic reconstructions of personal reflection and grandiose Americana mythology about migration and race, the piece explores what it means for a place historically significant to exist simultaneously as landmark, ruin, and unresolved cultural strife.
Produced by Blake Pfeil
Apagón: The History Of Cuban Blackouts
Milena Soci (US, 2026)
Milena Soci (US, 2026)
9 min
Apagón is an audio documentary about Cuba’s blackout crisis, following the stories of people forced to reorganize their lives around the disappearance of electricity. Through voices, archival material, and personal testimonies, the documentary explores how the island ended up living in the dark.
Produced and Edited by Milena Soci
Trip to Gurindji Country
Helene Thomas (AU, 2026)
Helene Thomas (AU 2026)
16 min
Five eager colleagues from the Central Australian Aboriginal Media Association (CAAMA) set out from Mparntwe/Alice Springs, travelling 985 kilometres north to Kalkarindji, a remote Aboriginal community in the Northern Territory, to take part in the 2025 Gurindji Freedom Day Festival. Leading the way is Orlando Rubuntja, a young Indigenous media creator and broadcaster from Kalkarindji. This radio feature follows Orlando as he wrestles with the discomfort of interviewing his own people — the shame that surfaces each time he asks for an interview — set against the deep pride he carries as a Gurindji man.
Produced by Helene Thomas in collaboration with Orlando Rubuntja, Caleb Doolan and Brenton Woods from the Central Australian Aboriginal Media Association (CAAMA). Freedom Day song by Lazy Late Boys
Sweet Little Human - Bugs, Bees and Bad Decisions
Orkan Media (DK 2025)
Nikolaj Kirk, Roxanne Batty, Jens Raunkjær and Magnus Møller (DK, 2025)
14 min
Mother Nature, played by punk legend Iggy Pop, has had a tough few thousand years. Tired and traumatized by relentless human expansion, they battle many of the ills that plague humans today: Addiction, anxiety, depression. And, of course, cynical, unpredictable rage.Their only solace? A good glass of whisky with their clumsy assistant Mr. Bee.
But all is not lost. Mother Nature decides it's time to make a change. And what better way to tell a tragic story about humans but through yet another podcast?
Enter 'Sweet Little Human' - a podcast all about the mess humans have made on planet Earth and their incredible ability to ignore and sidestep the issue. Even if it means the end for their silly little species.
Written, edited and produced by Nikolaj Kirk, Roxanne Batty, Jens Raunkjær and Magnus Møller.
www.orkanmedia.com
Featuring Iggy Pop as Mother Nature, Anjuli Deo as The Editor, and Maya Tekeli as Freelance Journalist Maya Tekeli.
Between two rivers - a journey into the mind of the land/Rhwng dwy afon - Taith i feddwl y tir
Ed Baxter (UK 2026)
Ed Baxter (UK 2026)
56 min
Between two rivers: a journey into the mind of the land/Rhwng dwy afon: Taith i feddwl y tir” is a radio artwork in English and Welsh, realised close to the sources of the rivers Severn and Wye, in Ceredigion, Wales.
Created by Ed Baxter (BASCA Composer of the Year 2013 etc), Steffan Cennydd (Theatr Cymru’s “Romeo a Juliet” 2025 etc); Richard James (Evolution of Beauty; Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci etc); and Michael Umney (Gold Award Winner, New York Festivals Radio Awards 2025; Winner, URTI Radio Grand Prix 2024 etc). With contributions from Dan Craig, Sandy Craig, Neil Haymer, Dewi Roberts and members of Tai Haf Heb Drigolyn. Thanks to all at The Hanging Garden, Llanidloes, Amanda Thesiger and Tim Meacham. Supported by The Colwinston Foundation, Hinrichsen Foundation, The Leche Trust and Unity Theatre Trust.
Produced by Ed Baxter
Narration Steffan Cennydd
Music, field recordings by Richard James
Interviews, field recordings by Michael Umney
Beneath the City is Soil
Robyn Moffat (UK, 2026)
Robyn Moffat (UK 2026)
34 min
A new narrative documentary podcast uncovering how communities are building climate resilience as heatwaves and wildfires sweep Europe.
The recent UK heatwave - alongside devastating wildfires across the UK, France and Spain - has made one thing clearer than ever: we urgently need new ways to live with a rapidly changing climate. Beneath the City is Soil, a new six-part narrative documentary podcast from Transmission Roundhouse, responds directly to this moment. Launching 25 August, the series traces how London’s communities are reimagining public space, community and collective action in the face of deepening inequality and environmental breakdown.
Hosted by Robyn Moffat, the series follows organisers, horticulturalists, environmental social scientists and educators who are building alternative futures from the ground up. Through field interviews, narrative storytelling, folk tales and immersive sound design, Beneath the City is Soil explores how climate change is inseparable from housing, land ownership, public space and the politics of who gets to shape the city.
Part 1 explores land and ownership - the roots of England’s housing crisis, access to land, and the history of the Right to Roam movement, featuring campaigner and social scientist Lewis Winks.
Produced by Robyn Moffat
Powered by Transmission Roundhouse.
Follow the series
Festival Selects: New Friend Chapter 4 - 1000 Miles
Bitsy Knox (CA, 2026)
Bitsy Knox (CA, 2026)
56 min
New Friend is a 5-part limited series audio documentary that delves into the fascinating story behind photographs taken by the groundbreaking lesbian artist and filmmaker Barbara Hammer in August 1973, on Hornby Island, Ja-Dai-Aich, British Columbia.
It's a story of art, archives, single motherhood, long-distance love affairs and liberation across 1000 miles.
Chapter 4 - 1000 Miles:
It’s the Summer of 1973. Barbara Hammer has had a busy summer, zigzagging across California on her motorcycle, camping and visiting ex-lovers, lesbian conferences and festivals. Along the way, she meets Terry Anderson, a feverishly intelligent single mother of two, an academic with an artistic mind.
Together, they embark on a 1000-mile adventure that will lead them to Hornby Island Ja-Dai-Aich along with two 19-year olds, Martha Ross and Rosemary Allenbach. On Hornby, Barbara Hammer takes three rolls of film, documenting a brief moment in all of its charged artistic and romantic energy.
In this chapter of New Friend, we delve into the torrid mystery of Barbara and Terry's long-distance love affair across dozens and dozens of letters, and culminating in an unforgettable, calamitous road trip.
Listener discretion: This chapter of New Friend contains references to addiction.
Hosted by Bitsy Knox.
Production, research, script and sound design by Bitsy Knox.
Mixing and mastering by Robert Steenkamer.
New Friend was originally aired on Cashmere Radio Berlin and 96.5 CHFR Hornby Island Community Radio. Cover image courtesy of The Estate of Barbara Hammer. New Friend is generously supported by the Canada Council for the Arts. Thank you to: The Estate of Barbara Hammer Hornby Island Community Archives Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University Cashmere Radio, Berlin 96.5 CHFR Hornby Island Community Radio KOW, Berlin Company Gallery, New York City Hornby Arts Centre Florrie Burke Louky Keijsers Koning Martha Ross Derek Anderson Rebecca Dunne Emma Walter Emily Harrison All beings, human and more-than-human, of Hornby Island, Ja-Dai-Aich, and its surrounding waters—where I am a part-time, uninvited guest on the unceded, traditional, and ancestral land of the K'omoks First Nation, the Eitsen, Pentlach, Sasitla and Sahtloot peoples.
Festival Selects: Good Clean Fun
Hayley Clarke (UK, 2026)
Hayley Clarke (UK 2025)
5 min
In the past few years I have become fascinated with sauna culture, and its ability to bring people together. It allows people to connect with new people in a space that can often feel quite intimidating. You may encounter people from different walks of life, and speak to people you might not normally interact with. Yet somehow, you’re all on a level playing field inside this sweat lodge.
A couple of years ago, when I was on a self-imposed writing retreat in Worthing, I booked into a local sauna down the road in Shoreham. This is where I met Dan Lawson - Ultra Marathon Runner, Aufguss Master and one of the co-founders of Nomadic Sauna. This is his story to tell, and it’s all good clean fun.
Produced by Hayley Clarke
Festival Selects: Do You Really Have To Go? (excerpt)
Nicola Mecca (IT 2026)
Nicola Mecca (IT, 2026)
10 min
"do you really have to go?" is a long-form drone composition derived from the closing twenty-two seconds of the last known Nick Drake demo. Room tone, tape hiss, breath and the resonance of the guitar body are radically stretched, layered and processed until the original recording is no longer identifiable by ear.
These sonic remnants are treated as the last known traces of a final departure, and extended into a long-form goodbye drone.
This submission is a ten-minute excerpt from the complete twenty-two-minute work.