The Random Kindness of Strangers

Mairi Johnson (UK 2024)

27 min

A non-narrated piece which tells the story of a refugee's escape from Iran and journey to the UK in the early 1980s, focusing on the random kindness of strangers (and sometimes the lack thereof) encountered during the journey. This piece was originally conceived in the 'In the Dark' Audio course, 2024.

Produced by Mairi Johnson

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Offleash

Terry Halbert (US 2025)

7 min

A woman walks 20 different dogs in a big park. None of them are leashed. She controls them with her voice, and tells why. Reveal at the end.

Produced by Terry Halbert

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XMTR Festival: Across The Sea

Camilla Hannan (AU, 2025)

27 min

A guided headphone audio work led by the artist along the promenade and beach at St-Leonards-on-Sea. Across the Sea is a sound walk by Australian audio producer Camilla Hannan, created especially for this year’s XMTR Audio Arts Festival.

Part soundscape, part sonic correspondence, Across the Sea is an audio love letter between two communities of ocean swimmers — one in St Leonards-on-Sea in the UK, the other in Williamstown, Australia. Over three months, swimmers from both sides of the world and in contrasting seasons, recorded and exchanged voice notes capturing their daily ocean rituals: the slap of bouncy waves, the pull of strong currents, icy dawn plunges, glimpses of seahorses and dolphins. These recordings trace a shared rhythm of immersion — not only in water, but in place, routine, and kinship.

Camilla Hannan is an Australian audio producer, sound artist and field recordist. Her art and radio works have been exhibited, performed, installed and broadcast in Australia and internationally.
Underlying all her work is a deep fascination with the nature of the sonic environment, how we listen to that environment and the ways in which this listening impacts on our micro and macro worlds. She is interested in the ways in which we can transgress the traditional division between audience/listener and performer/broadcaster, seeking to build connections between communities and individuals through sound.

Produced by Camilla Hannan

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XMTR Festival: Tom’s House

Jacob Dwyer (UK/NL 2025)

51 min

Tom’s House is a one person performed audio-drama. It incorporates voice, live foley, field recordings and an original soundtrack composed by K.Freund, Kareem Lotfy, Jacob Oostra and Zuza Banasińska.

In Tom’s House, we listen to the diaristic meanderings of someone who’s returned to the UK for the first time in 15 years. Walking up Haddon Drive he spots the house of an old friend, Tom. The front door is open, so he goes inside. Wandering around the empty Tudor cottage –making cups of tea, rearranging CD collections and zoning in on the minutiae of domestic space– he ruminates on ideas of emotional intimacy, friendship and grief.

Jacob Dwyer is an artist based in Amsterdam working with audio, moving-images and writing. His work often centres around personal encounters that could equally be seen as fables or heresy. He has presented in art spaces and music venues, including Cafe Oto (London), David Dale Gallery (Glasgow), Good Children (New Orleans) and De Appel (Amsterdam). In 2022 he released The Devil Museum on vinyl with Mana Records and has since published Notes on Devils with Building Fictions. Most recently he has released his new audio drama, Tom's House, on South of North.

Written, recorded and produced by Jacob Dwyer

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XMTR Festival: Radio Limbo Live From St Leonards-on-Sea

Pete Hazell / Limbo Tapes (UK, 2025)

47 mins

Radio Limbo returns to St Leonards for another guided audio-trip — an unusual quest through original music, collage, soundscapes, and disembodied voices. The show celebrates radio as a shape-shifting portal to other worlds, a wilderness of its own, and its unique qualities of companionship. Join Pete for this curation and performance of surreal scenes and sonic experiments, using local intrigue and lost histories as the jumping-off point.

Pete Hazell is a music and audio artist based in Bristol. His various projects fall under the ‘Limbo’ umbrella, known for their signature blend of curious music, sound design, storytelling, and collage. His cassette label Limbo Tapes focuses on releasing music, monthly residency on Bristol’s Noods Radio is both a mix of new , and in 2024, Pete self-produced and released the audio series Limbo Calling as a podcast, expanding the Limbo universe through character, voice work, and surreal audio fiction.
His latest focus is performance — bringing Limbo sonics to a live audience.
Limbo Tapes

Written, recorded and produced by Pete Hazell
patreon.com/radiolimbo
limbotapes.bandcamp.com
soundcloud.com/limbotapes
instagram.com/limbo_tapes/

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XMTR Festival: Habitual Rituals

Stellaria Media (UK 2025)

10 min

A composition made from the sounds recorded by participants of The Habitual Rituals Workshop at XMTR Festival, paying attention to habits and routines of how we open doors, walk across a room, use kitchen implements, pour water and other everyday moments. Participants recorded themselves repeating familiar actions, along with descriptions of what they were doing to create a a generative, multi-speaker sound installation that allows rhythms of existence to emerge and interact.

Stellaria Media are based in South Devon and within two community radio stations, Soundart Radio (Totnes) and Skylark (Dartmoor). Our background as artists means we are always exploring, listening, responding and creating together with communities

Produced by Lucinda Guy and Alice Armstrong

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XMTR Festival Selects: Slag Speaks (Extract)

Emily Candela UK (2025)

5 min

‘Slag Speaks’ centres on a seemingly unassuming specimen found in the backroom archive of the Lapworth Museum of Geology in Birmingham: a small chunk of slag, cast off by a Bilston steelworks in the 1950s. Slag is an industrial by-product of steel production that is found all around the post-industrial West Midlands. While it is indelibly linked to the region, it lacks the public attention and respect reserved for monuments and the monetary value of the glistening minerals displayed in the front of the museum. Slag is easily dismissed. But it is a persistent and powerful reminder of the industrial past. ‘Slag Speaks’ is a polyvocal life story of slag, including voices of a steelworker, curator, geologist and the fictional voice of slag herself. Together, these voices stitch together themes of labour, the blurring line between human-made and natural, and the dynamics of the often-overlooked, or ‘slagged-off’ industrial byproduct and post-industrial region.

Produced by: Emily Candela in partnership with the Lapworth Museum.

It is part Emily’s Arts Council funded Sonic Minerals project that sits at the intersection of her audio and experimental history practices, and explores the role podcasting can play in museums.

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XMTR Festival Selects: 1001 Stabs

Lina Prestwood (UK 2025)

8 min

To be born in Gaza is to be born already bleeding.
Before you take your first step, a blade is pressed gently, precisely, against your soul, the first of 1001 stabs

Produced by Lina Prestwood
Written in August 2025 by F. (Gaza) 
Read by F. and Lyana Mansour (USA)
With thanks to  Fatima Zahra Gahzli (Turkey)

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XMTR Festival Selects: Radio Incantation - Dzëë

Amanda Gutiérrez (CA / MX 2025)

Audio Block

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8 min

Rooted in the artist’s Zapotec heritage from the Valley of Oaxaca, Mexico, the work channels ancestral teachings on listening and evoking through the art of terrestrial transmission. In this sonic ritual, radio waves become vessels for connection with unseen and intangible presences, intentionally engaging with the territory of St Leonards-on-Sea — across time, between past and future spectra.

Produced by Amanda Gutiérrez

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XMTR Festival Selects: Posidoniaceae

Giacomo Bagni + Veronica Lugaro (IT 2024)

5 min

In this episode of Botanismi, winter leads us into the sea, where Posidonia oceanica sways in the currents. Once a land plant, it found its way back to the water, weaving vast prairies beneath the surface. A hidden world, fragile and alive, waiting to be heard.

Written, recorded and produced by Giacomo Bagni and Veronica Lugaroy

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