Transmissions
Field Recordings: The Sound of 2022
Eleanor McDowall (UK 2022)
Eleanor McDowall (UK 2022)
57 min
A slow weave of some of the past year’s Field Recordings, from a clock repair shop in January to snow falling in December. As 2022 comes to a close, what do we remember? Let these sounds lull you into the new year away from the noise.
Clock repair shop, London, UK on Saturday 22nd January 2022 at 11am – by Andrew Strangeway
Trumpeter Swans, Sauvie Island Wildlife Area Portland, Oregon, USA on 28th January 2022 – by Jason Hovatter
Transmission Tower, Portland, Oregon, USA on 8th February 2022 – by Jason Hovatter
The bells at St Michael’s Golden-Domed Monastery, Kyiv, Ukraine on Sunday 13th February 2022 at 4.43pm – by Barny Smith
Ironbark Gorge, Victoria, Australia in the early morning on Sunday 20th February 2022 – by Anouk and Camilla Hannan
Woodpeckers by the water, Buckinghamshire, England, in March 2022 – by Paul Ridout
Night train, Vedia, Buenos Aires Province, Argentina in April 2022 – by Joaquín Conde
In the gloaming, Eskdalemuir, Scotland on 19th April 2022 – by Geoff McQueen
Creaky trees at Rannoch Moor, Scottish Highlands, Scotland on 23rd April 2022 – by Steve Urquhart
Stream in a forest glade, Ambleside, Cumbria, UK in April 2022 – by Geoff Marsh
Rain on the sea, Camber Sands, East Sussex, UK on 23rd May 2022 – by Sam Clements and Louise Owen
Parsley frogs at night, Lérouville, Lorraine, France on 5th June 2022 – by Colin Hunter
Lake swim at sunrise, the morning after midsummer, Groß Köris, Germany in June 2022 – by Eleanor McDowall
Fort Greene Park, Brooklyn, NY, USA in June 2022 – by James T. Green
Bells on sheep, east of Rome around 7pm on 26th June – by Cosmin Sandu
Pondweed bubbles, Raglan Castle moat, Wales, UK in the afternoon on 16th July 2022 – by Paul Ridout
Sitting in the dark, by the fan, reading and writing emails, London, UK on 19th July 2022 – by Siddharth Khajuria
8pm, rural village garden, Suffolk, UK on 19th July 2022 – by Melissa Harrison
Takapou Bay, South Island, New Zealand in August 2022 – by Martin Zaltz Austwick
Katydids in the moonlight, Bearsville, New York, USA on 20th August 2022 – by Joe Dobkin
Cow chorus in the middle of the road, near Te Kao, New Zealand on 30th August 2022 – by Helen Zaltzman
Thunderstorm through skylight, London, UK at 11.20pm on 5th September 2022 – by Eleanor McDowall
Muffled Bells, Cuddington, Buckinghamshire, UK on 19th September 2022 – by Paul Ridout
Binaural bells, St Pauls Cathedral, London, UK on 19th September 2022 – by Joe Harvey-Whyte
Enough is Enough National Day of Action, Outside Kings Cross Station, London, UK on 1st October 2022
Dusk chorus, Ewingar, New South Wales, Australia on 16th October 2022 – by Jaye Kranz
Heavy rain, North West London, UK in October 2022 – by Alex Micu
Winter Bees, Flitwick, Bedfordshire, UK in November 2022 – by Julian Higgs
Westminster Bridge, London, UK on 5th November 2022
Woman, life, freedom, Iran solidarity protest in Trafalgar Square, London, UK on 26th November 2022
Inside the bell tower, All Hallows, Twickenham on the morning of 16th November 2022 – by Alan Hall
Koliada singers rehearsing for the Christmas season, Le Plateau-Mont-Royal, Montreal, Québec, Canada on 30th November 2022 – by Mira Burt-Wintonick
Bells (church and cow) in the hills of Flüeli-Ranft, Switzerland in the evening of 6th December 2022 – by Charlie Shackleton
Crackling fire and chimes, London, UK on 9th December 2022 – by Eleanor McDowall
Snow falling on the canal, London, UK, near midnight on Sunday 11th December 2022 – by Eleanor McDowall
Produced by Eleanor McDowall
Follow the series
In The Dark Bristol: Creatures of the Rave
Eve Piper (UK 2021)
Eve Piper (UK 2021)
10 min
In The Dark Bristol - New Producers
Creatures of the Rave is a poem about the temptation, atmosphere and thrill of underground raves. It is a first-person narrative account following the arc of one night’s raving, the anticipation beforehand, the rush at its peak and the come down of its closure. The poem aims to uncover what happens at an illegal rave, an unregulated intervention into often discarded public space that can somehow simultaneously be a thing of stigma and status. Eva worked with producers and sound designers to create an immersive drum & bass soundscape to accompany my poem.
Produced by Eva Piper
The Letter S
Chris Brookes (CA 2001)
Chris Brookes (CA 2001)
54min
Whispers in the Air
On December 12th, 1901 Guigliermo Marconi received the world's first trans-Atlantic wireless signal on the cliff just above Chris Brook’s Battery Radio studio. Or... did he?
This beautifully poetic audio work combines fact and fiction, reality and construction to tell the story of the beginning of radio and sound waves. The perfect place to start for any budding audiofile.
Produced by Chris Brookes - Battery Radio
Created for the 2001 centenary of Marconi's transmission. First broadcast: ABC "Classic FM" Dec. 12, 2001.
Special Commendation, Prix Marulic 2002
Atlantic Journalism Award 2002
Bricks: Bristoler Chronik
Cliff Andrade (UK 2021)
Cliff Andrade / Bricks (UK 2021)
45 min Episode 5 of 6
Audio Walks for armchair lsitening
Bricks Podcast is a chance to listen into the individual worlds of artists and creatives. Commissioned by Bricks, the episodes delve into the practice and storytelling of unique topics.
A walk to a place long forgotten becomes the basis for a rumination on memory, place, and the creation of personal identities. Cliff Andrade’s internalised audio adventure into the unique mental state entered into when walking.
More here
Written and Hosted by Cliff Andrade
Bricks Podcast
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.