XMTR #17: Sounds from the North Yorkshire Coast

This XMTR (Transmitter) Radio Hour celebrates works that have been submitted to xmtr.fm over the past year with an episode from Bristol based radio project Limbo Tapes' new podcast Limbo Calling, an exercise in mischief and the mundane from New York based Icelandic composer/sound designer Andrea Kristindottir, Berlin based photographer and audio story teller Miri Berlin takes on a haunting journey from intensive care unit to crematorium and musician and sound engineer Ivan Eastley contemplates silence. 

This XMTR (Transmitter) Radio Hour is dedicated to  Earlid a gallery of evolving exhibits of sound art. US based Earlid founder and curator and seasoned radio practitioner Joan Shuman talks through a selection of five audio works that come under the theme Hubris and Humility. Works featured are by Bassel, Meira Asher, Evangeline Riddiford Graham and Joan Shuman.

1. And the sea gave up the dead which were in it  
Myra Al-Rahim aka Bassel, 2019
https://www.earlid.org/posts/cycles-of-atrocity/

2. Cicatrix
 Joan Schuman, 2008
https://www.joanschuman.com/hyperacousia/posts/cicatrix

3. Still Sleeping
Meira Asher, 2016
https://www.earlid.org/posts/meira-asher-still-sleeping

4. Dog Woman: An Interview
Evangeline Riddiford Graham, 2020
https://www.earlid.org/posts/dog-woman

5.The Hitman
Joan Schuman 2021
https://www.joanschuman.com/hyperacousia/posts/how-you-treat-them-is-what-you-are

This Transmitter Radio Hour is a selection of audio works chosen by award winning Glasgow based radio producer and sound artist Steve Urquhart. He joins Lucia to discuss why these works inspire, make him laugh and more importantly break the rules and conventions of radio making. Steve has worked for local radio in Cumbria, National Prison Radio and made many many documentaries and shorts for BBC Radio. 

Works featured: 

1. LEAVING A MARK

Produced by Emily Hsaio for Transom Story Workshop, 2013

https://www.thirdcoastfestival.org/feature/leaving-a-mark

2. THE HOT DOGS

BBC Radio Cumbria, circa 1999/2000. Presenter: Alan Smith. Producer: Steve Urquhart 

3. RABBLE ROUSERS (extract)

Produced by Sarah Boothroyd, 2012

https://soundcloud.com/sarah-boothroyd/boothroyd-rabble-rousers

4. PRISON WALK (unedited)

Recorded by Chris Impey inside HMP Brixton, London, 2011

5. LYN AND MARY (extract)

The Listening Project, BBC, 2013

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01p6rz3

6. THE FURNITURE SUPPER CLUB

Produced by Clara Lou, 2017

https://soundcloud.com/clara-lipfert/the-furniture-supper-club

https://www.claralou.net/work/the-furniture-supper-club

7.  BUMP (from ‘Time Constraints AKA the 32Megabyte Mixtape’)

Produced by Alan Bryden, 2017

https://soundcloud.com/listentosteve/alan-bryden-bump-from-time-constraints

https://linktr.ee/alan_bryden

This show is dedicated to the joyful chaos that is Angel Edmonton in Enfield, North London. Once an industrial hub attracting factory workers and their families, the area has been neglected for decades as factories gave way to warehouses and social housing fell into decay.  Today it's a multicultural crossroads undergoing massive redevelopment. Echoes of Angels produced by Social Broadcasts takes us on a trip down the main artery - Fore Street, guided by local residents and business owners. 

Echoes of Angels a Social Broadcast by  – Lucia Scazzocchio 

Commissioned by Fore Street for All 

Next we join Enfield People’s Theatre with local producer Soveks Lo behind the scenes of their latest production Bread and Roses - a community play recounting the 1915 Edmonton Rent Strike and the community action (led and won by local women) drawing parallels with the current housing crises.

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This Transmitter Radio Hour is an ode to tapes and time, featuring Glasgow based sound artist Steve Urquhart’s Doing Bird a mixtape recorded with inmates at Perth Prison (Scotland), a meditation on time by Brighton based composer and sound artists Joseph Wilkinson and a wonky plunderphonic mixtape by Bristol based Limbo Tapes.

1. Radio producer and sound artist Steve Urquhart worked with inmates at HMP Perth engage with archive birdsong and oral history recordings from the Scottish Ornithologists’ Club in a unique, creative audio art collaboration.

You can listen to side B of Doing Bird here

2. Joseph Wilkinson is a composer, sound designer and audio artist based in Brighton, exploring the relationship between sound and our inner worlds. He collaborates with his wife and creative partner Cam Brandow as Farfar Studio, their combined channel for enchanting experiences through bespoke music, sound, and storytelling.
I sit in the shade is a short form documentary that is a meditation on time, our relationship to it, and the world around us. A mix of introspection, interviews with thoughts from authors, thinkers and tree-people.

3. Side B of Limbo Tapes  is from a compilation of sounds made for monthly show Radio Limbo on Noods Radio, which is the flagship for cassette label, Limbo Tapes, a collaboration between Pete Hazell and Sean Lee. 
You can hear side A of Limbo Tapes here

This Transmitter Radio hour is dedicated to a series of 'Audio Postcards' produced by Lucia Scazzocchio (Social Broadcasts) to accompany Sea Change part of At the Docks 2023, a new summer season of arts culture and events at the Royal Docks in East London. Curated by Invisible Dust, Sea Change brings artists together with leading academics and University College London inspired by research into sustainable responses to the climate emergency.  

‘Sea Change’ is a term used for a substantial shift in situation or perspective and was first used in Shakespeare’s ‘The Tempest’, a play with a background, like the Royal Docks, of sea voyages, developing globalisation and colonialism. Sea Change points to the future, to the need for changing practices, but also alludes to a pivot point of the climate crisis in the docks history – the move from sail to steam power. This development led to an enormous expansion in London’s trade and exchange of goods and peoples, which enabled modern day industrialisation, globalisation and with it the problems of climate change. 

Artists Dana Olărescu, Raqs Media Collective, Melanie Manchot and Simon Faithfull give a unique insight into their commissions at the Royal Docks between 11-29th May. 

This Transmitter Radio Hour explores the sonic theatre of Soundworlds -  in conversation with director Patrick Eakin Young. The award winning Soundworlds is an audio stage for diverse stories where musicians, writers, theatre makers and sound artists collaborate to create a unique and immersive series of musical theatre for the ears.

Extracts played are from:

1. Remnants Part 1
A three-part auditory excavation, unearthing the songs and stories of love and loss, buried beneath the soil of post-war Bosnia.
Featuring: Courtney Angela Brkic
Composition: Christian Mason, Shelley Parker

2. Town is by the Sea
An audio picture book conjuring impressions from a childhood spent in the coastal mining communities of Nova Scotia
Music composed and performed by Anna Rheingans
Text by Joanne Schwartz, adapted from her 2017 book with illustrator Sydney Smith

3. A Christmas Party
Living-room concert meets domestic drama in an immersive holiday special
Voice and piano: Douglas Dare

This Transmitter Radio Hour is a selection of audio works chosen by sound artist, musician and audio maker Samuel Robinson who joins Lucia in conversation as they discuss what audio works bring him joy, as well as unpacking some of the current podcast tropes, listening in on some heart- felt conversations and joining some dots between Sam’s life in the US and the UK through sound.

1. Captain Maurice Seddon  - May i explain explain my situation?

In the words of william english “captain maurice seddon was a highly unusual and inventive person who took an uncompromising stance on life”. he was the inventor of heated clothing, and made many media appearances in the 1980’s to promote them. 

Seddon recorded his phone calls, this piece is one of 12 from the collection ‘the seddon tapes vol. 1’ put together by his friend William English in 2017 and released on paradigm discs.

2. Emily Naylor - Untitled

This is a piece a friend (Emily) sent me a while ago and recently remembered. Emily made it while doing a radio masters at Goldsmiths.

3. The onion - A very fatal murder (episode 1)
It’s such a clever send up of the true crime ‘genre’ of podcast spawned by the success of serial. it nails it. I listened to this first in 2018 (i think when it came out) and yet despite it feeling so played out then i’ve noticed the production of podcasts with the approach of this podcast is parodying only increase!

4. Everything is alive - Grain of sand (inspector sands clip)
 This clip is taken is an interview with a grain of sand called chioke. each episode of EIA (or those i’ve heard) has an intermission of sorts that features a short segment that is tangentially linked to the primary interview. in this episode the link is the ‘inspector sands’ announcement used at train stations to alert staff to a fire without scaring the public.
Hosted  by Ian Chillag, produced by Jennifer Mills
Listen to the whole episode

5. Samuel Robinson - Driving to the airport with Larissa
Very few people make me really laugh but Larissa is one of them. in 2021 she gave me a lift to the airport and started talking to the GPS which made me laugh.  I wanted to capture the moment, to document our friendship and its dynamic. I started recording on my watch (i think), and a few months later when home I cut it up and paired with a piece of music i’d made at some point.

6. Raw sounds podcast (cultural exchange segment)

In early 2019 i worked with a group of people at raw material’s raw sounds project to develop their creative audio production skills. It was pitched to me as a podcast course, but there’s so many different types of podcasts, and this group had disparate interests and needs. I chose to work to each week support them to develop skills with interviewing, recording, editing, music production, critical thinking, scripting, ideation, etc. we would record what we did each week with the view to edit it together ultimately to create our own podcast. I have a very good friend who worked as a teacher in Sonoma county, California with a group of younger people with varying special needs. i proposed we do a ‘cultural exchange’, in which members of each group would ask and answer each others questions — the results of which i edited together and assembled over a piece of music composed by someone in my group. 

This next hour is dedicated to a single project recorded and produced by Lucia Scazzocchio in collaboration with the Tower Hamlets Regeneration team. 

Docklands and the Isle of Dogs has changed dramatically since being established as a busy industrial hub centred around the docks to an industrial wasteland in the 1980's and then an ambitious redevelopment with the arrival of Canary Wharf. 
 The DLR and the infrastructure around this overground railway line has been key to the development of the area.

Talking to local people who live and work on the Isle of Dogs across four generations we will hear about the unique history of the island, how things have changed and how the DLR Underline could be used in the future.

Commissioned by the London Borough of Tower Hamlets as part of the ‘DLR Underline Activation’ project, this audio series recorded from Sept 21-May 22 aims to celebrate the area’s heritage to collectively reimagine the future of the Underline as a public active space.

Thank you to everyone who contributed their words and insights with special thanks to Cubitt Library and the Friends of Island History Trust.

Recording and Sound Design: Lucia Scazzocchio
Recording Assistant: Dhevia Sharma

Every location on the Cities and Memory sound map features 2 sounds, the original field recording of that place and a reimagined sound that presents that place and time as somewhere else, somewhere new. There are over 5,000 sounds featured on this sound map, spread over more than 100 countries and territories. We’ll visit a selection and keeping with the concept you will hear the original field recording of a place followed by a re-imagined piece. 

Featuring: 
1. Duet for breaking waves and the horizon by Cities and Memory  (Caloura in the Azores)
2.  Lockdown thunderstorm in Oxford by Cities and Memory (Oxford)

3. Chongqing Docks by Andy McDade (Chaotianmen Dock, Chongqing, South West China recorded by Ian MacArthur)

4. The loneliness of the late-night station by Cities and Memory (Berlin at Bellevue station recorded by Cristina Iscenco)

5. It’s not a wave it’s a river by Cristina Marras (Carlo Scarpa,  Antivole Italy)
6.The Stadio Pier Luigi Penzo in Venice by de Velden (Venice, Italy)

7. Echoes by Bill Stevens (Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges, New York, USA)
8 A recording of a story 'Alfons and the Magic Christmas Tree featured on HCJB’s DX Party Line hosted by Clayton Howard. Recorded by Paul Rawdon, courtesy of the Shortwave Radio Archive for the Shortwave Transmissions project, documenting and reimagining the sounds of shortwave radio. 

9 War on Hugs by Kid Kin