2025 Selects: Life In Progress

Phoebe McIndoe (UK/DE 2025)

6 min

Life in Progress is the story of Nanou Thassinda and her journey for belonging and acceptance in the UK. After Nanou's dad was murdered in The Democratic Republic of the Congo for publicly speaking-out against the government, Nanou lived as an asylum seeker for 11 years in and around London. In that time, Nanou found hope and empowerment, experimenting with english and the specific regional dialects she encountered as she moved from door to door. This piece is about finding voice, hope and the ever-transitory nature of life.

Produced by Phoebe McIndoe
Voice & Story: Nanou Thassinda.
Executive Editor: Ingo Kottkamp

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2025 Selects: RadioActive: On Water - Liquidation

Meira Asher (IL/IRE  2024)

57 min

RadioActive - on Water is a six episode podcast series, exploring the interactions between transmission, sound, activism and water. Each episode is created by a different artist/group of artists who engage with water politics and the politics of listening through the medium of radio. ‘Liquidation’ by Meira Asher interrogates the politically engineered water crisis in the Occupied Palestinian Jordan Valley where Israel deliberately and strategically deprives Palestinian shepherd communities of access to water.

There is currently a structural water crisis in the Palestinian Occupied Jordan Valley. Not a climate or geographical water crisis, a deliberate socially and politically engineered crisis. Israel, since it invaded the West Bank in 1967, controls every public aspect of civilian life in the Jordan Valley. Israel administers two populations, the Israeli settlers and the indigenous Palestinian residents. Israel deliberately and strategically deprives Palestinian farming communities of access to fresh, clean and reliable water supplies, water that is needed for crops and herds, as well as for the Palestinian farmers and herders.

This can mean either not permitting them to be connected to municipal water supplies, despite the Israeli settlers having such access. It also entails not permitting Palestinian people to sink new wells on their own land, and blocking their access to existing wells and springs, either by fencing off the water source or destroying pipes bringing the water to the herders and farmers. The end result is frequently that either the farmers have to pay extortionate prices to purchase water from the Palestinian authority, or if they cannot afford this option they are forced to abandon their land and way of life.

Featuring the water truck driver, co-activists Natasha and Nitsan, shepherds community of Khalet Makhul, shepherd ‘W’, shepherds community of Hirbet Samra and Aref Daragmah.

English Transcript

Producer - Meira Asher
Translation from Arabic: Laila Abd El-Razaq
Introductory text: Liam Evans
Series - Co-curated by Stephen Shiell & Meira Asher, produced by Meira Asher. Episodes by Blanc Sceol (Stephen Shiell & Hannah White), Lisa Blackmore and Leonel Vásquez, RE-PEAT collective, Margarida Mendes, Carlos Monleon and Nathaniel Mann, and Meira Asher

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2025 Selects: Coastal Soundforms : Tymbals and Golden Gallopers, Beach

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.

Listen to the series

Produced, recorded, mixed and mastered by Andrius Mack

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2025 Selects: I Dream Of Water: The Well, The Bay, The Sea

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

Listen to the collection

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2025 Selects: Reality Looks Back

Anne Jeppesen (DK, 2025)

Annejeppesen · Reality looks back

21 min

When you watch a particle it acts like a particle. But when you look away, it does a whole other thing.

This story explores modes of experiencing the strange quantum basis of an everyday life. It journeys through split déja-vu, Schrödinger’s hamster and the clouds of possibilities that are hiding just beyond our reach.

This piece was developed as a part of the YASS! Mentorship program facilitated by Radio Papesse and mentored by Cristal Duhaime.

Written and Produced by Anne Jeppeseen

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2025 Selects: Gigi Riva and I

M. Cristina Marras (IT 2025)

12 min

A story about childhood, wonder, memories and (a bit) about mischievous revenge. Well, the story is about the soccer player Gigi Riva who became an actual god in the mind of all Sardinians, my fellow people, when he "led the very modest soccer team of Cagliari to win the Serie A championship in the 1969-70 season." All I can tell you is to advise you that this is not a story about sport, but I’d rather not spoil the plot as I am certain it will surprise and enchant, if you have 12 minute to spare.

Produced by M. Cristina Marras

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2025 Selects: Shorn Women

Chloe Turpin (UK/FR 2025)

33 min

At the end of WWII, around 20,000 women across France were accused of ‘horizontal collaboration’. Their alleged crime: sleeping with German soldiers. And their punishment was having their heads shaved and facing a public beating. Chloe’s grand-mother’s Émilienne was one of the shorn women of French liberation. Like many others at the time, her story was always shrouded in shame and mystery.

From uncomfortable conversations with family members in Brittany to a trawl through the French National Archives, Shorn Women looks at this controversial and overlooked historical event. Confronting official and personal narratives, it's a story about justice, taboo and the power of speech.

Produced, Written and Music by Chloe Turpin
Voices: James Davey, Naomi Bloomstein and George Roll

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2025 Selects: Live or Dye

Maria Conterno (IT, 2024)

Kaleidacoustics · Live or dye

11 min

Four women talk about life, ageing, and accepting (or not) their ageing body. And the role society plays in that. Four different perspectives, four voices telling four stories that diverge, overlap and end up in the same bold choice: not dying their grey hair.

Produced by Maria Conterno

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XMTR Radio Hour #39: Radio Limbo

Produced by Social Broadcasts (UK 2025)

60 min / Episode 38 of 38

In this XMTR (Transmitter) radio hour we are taken into the liminal audio apace that is Radio Limbo. This guided audio trip is  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. This was recorded live at the XMTR Audio Arts Festival in St Leonards-On-Sea.

Radio Limbo aka 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. In 2024, Pete released the audio series Limbo Calling as a podcast, expanding the Limbo universe through character, voice work, and surreal audio fiction.

XMTR Radio Hour Produced by Lucia Scazzocchio

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All Under One Magnetosphere

Hannah Kelp-Welch & Oliver Sanders (UK 2025)

28 min

Electromagnetic waves fill the universe, radiating  from solar storms and bursts of lightning, but also from our electronic devices and infrastructures. Using simple, DIY tools, a community of audio enthusiasts translates these waves into sound, uncovering hidden sonic worlds.

Five dedicated ‘natural radio’ enthusiasts venture beyond the electromagnetic pollution of the city, tuning into the Earth’s natural static to reveal a rich, textured soundscape rarely heard.

Stephen McGreevy, a cult figure within this practice, shares stories of his recordings during the geomagnetic storm of 1989. Hannah Kemp-Welch travels to northern Norway in search of the electromagnetic waves of the aurora borealis, struggling to escape the omnipresent hum of the mains power grid. Alyssa Moxley captures the crackles of shooting stars in southern France; Matt Parker ventures into the National Radio Quiet Zone in Virginia, USA; and Anonea experiments with antennas from a remote location in northern Spain.

This audio feature encourages listeners  to contemplate the vast, often invisible role electromagnetism plays in our daily lives. It invites us to look up at the sky and imagine radio waves bouncing off layers of the atmosphere, connecting us all under one magnetosphere.

Produced by Hannah Kemp-Welch and Oliver Sanders

Research & Development: Hannah Kemp-Welch
Editing & Sound Design: Oliver Sanders
Executive Producer: Lucia Scazzocchio

Special thanks to Anonea, Alyssa Moxley, Dan Tapper, Francesca Thakorlal, Matt Parker, Rob Stammes, Rebekah Breding, Ruth Stewart, Sébastien Robert and Stephen P. McGreevy.

A Social Broadcasts production for BBC Radio 4- Illuminated

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