← Wednesday 25th September 2024 →

From the most abrasive to the unbelievably sublime, Hope Valley Cement Works attempts to curate a selection of experimental music and sounds, from collected field recordings and sound collages, to serene ambience, impressive drone and the odd deconstructed club track. A series by Kris Cooper.

In this episode, Sonic Hugs, curated by Colin Black for This Sonic Life.

Curator's statement:

No matter where we live in the world, we all feel alone from time to time, some of us more than others, some of us to the point we can’t bear it anymore ... this collection of new works entitled Sonic Hugs is a reminder that we are not alone. With this objective at hand, I invited nine of Australia’s most distinctive & esteemed artists to create original new works that express their interpretation of a “sonic hug.”

At the time, I remember wondering, just how will these artists combine the ideas of “sonic” and “hug” into their new works? If we explore the word “hug” by itself, then we usually start to think of the following: hug … to anticipate a hug, to be hugged, to have been hugged, and that research has shown that a hug can reduce feelings of loneliness and the harmful physical effects of stress. A hug can also boost feel-good hormones such as dopamine and serotonin, the antidepressant hormone that reduces feelings of loneliness, controls anxiety and elevates mood. Psychologically, a hug builds trust, boosts self-esteem, and creates a sense of safety, creating a pathway towards a deeper connection.

But this was not just a hug, but a Sonic Hug … then I also remembered a quote from an interview I did for my PhD with Andrew McLennan about his experiences as an ABC radio producer working with artists at The Listening Room program where he explained, “But artists don’t always do expected things …”(1) In this context, McLennan is discussing the potential awkwardness between the public media programming directives and the artist’s desire for creative, uncensored, boundless possibilities.

While with the Sonic Hugs collection, there are differences (e.g. there is no overarching government programming directive other than the request to compose a sonic hug), artistsboth delivered works that met and challenged my expectations, all of which I found sonically highly stimulating and was touched by. What emerged from this diverse mix and treatments of the subject matter is a multi-faceted creative exploration of embrace, connectedness, and community.

If we listen deeper into these individual new works, in the order that they will be presented, we can hear that with Cat Hope’s 7 Options (as performed by The Low Tone Orchestra), we are listening to how musicians empathise with each other during a live recording as they are “moving in and out of each other’s timbre,” in effect exploring varying degrees of sonic connections.

With Ros Bandt’s Sonic Hugs, we enter a personal autobiographical soundscape of tenderness that, as Bandt explains, “metamorphose into a new magical energy empowering love, kindness, sharing, community, co-operation and selflessness, a larger hug from nature and the cosmos.” In Eve Klein’s Mantra of Enfolding we imagine our first embrace and connection as a zygote in our mother’s womb. Robert Sazdov’s “I Cried” Spasovden, electroacoustic compositional structure is based on “20-second sonic sections that aim to deliver 12 sonic hugs.”

Next, Stephen Adams brings us Close To Your Ears in which a single vocal gesture develops and is augmented with other elements to create intimacy, as Adams asks the question, “What is a sonic hug?” With, Claire ‘Furchick’ Pannell’s Berjalan, amongst other things, reaches across cultural boundaries by using music as a type of universal language. In Jim Denley’s Mixmaster Troposphere we explore embracing the Australian environment and place and is intended as a sonic hug to the Aboriginal people (Wayilwan, Gamilaraay and Wiradjuri) who had previously gathered on the remote site in the Warrumbungle National Park where the work is recorded.

With David Chesworth’s Cohesion Calisthenics we are listening to the “personal experiences of embodied hugs and being in larger social gatherings, which we sometimes struggle to be part of.” Finally, with Colin Black’s Embosomed, we are exploring the light and shades of embrace, a reaching out for connection and fragility.

I now invite you all to open your ears to this new collection of works that affords vulnerability, speaks from different levels and dimensions and brings focus to the need for more interpersonal/social connectedness and cohesion.

Members of Radia, the international group of independent cultural radio stations, explore new and forgotten ways of making radio.

This episode features new music by Tescon Pol, Richard Bégin, AFTERVOLTER, Bruno Varvohza, Loo(p)cy, M.B., Wahn, Psionic Asylum, David Lee Myers and Jacob Audrey Taves.

A selection of new experimental music and sound work from the international underground network Unexplained Sounds, curated by Raffaele Pezzella (Sonologyst).

FUNKT offered 53 hours of electronic music and sound art from Cologne: computer music... self-invented instruments... DIY electronics... radio play... sound art... noise... data sonification... field recordings... radio art... sound studies... historical anchor points... niches... insider tips... different generations of Cologne's electronic + sound art landscape... join our music discovery journey... Full details, line-up and updates: https://www.gerngesehen.de/funkt

The FUNKT programme was developed under the project management of Georg Dietzler by Anke Eckardt, Claudia Robles-Angel, Dietmar Bonnen, Dirk Specht and Felix Knoblauch, in cooperation with Sarah Washington and Knut Aufermann. Thanks to sponsors Musikfonds e. V. with project funds from the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media as part of the special programme Neustart Kultur, Kunststiftung NRW (North Rhine-Westphalia Endowment for the Arts), the Cultural Office of the City of Cologne.

FUNKT was a festival of electronic music and sound art from Cologne, which took place on the 16th, 17th and 18th of April 2021.

This episode kicks off with a piece from Homework, the alchemical collaboration between Italian composer MonoLogue and London-based percussionist Matt Atkins.

We also take a first listen to Ginestra, the forthcoming album by Iranian multi-instrumentalist Ava Rasti.

The rest of this show is given over to an exploration of the Greek experimental music scene, starting with Cafe Oto's release of violinist Dimos Vryzas' wonderful live set from January.

Dimos has also prepared a beautiful mix of music from the Greek experimental and alternative music scene which comprises the second half of the show.

This is the Flaming Pines radio show featuring new releases, mixes and experiments in field recording, sound art and experimental music, hosted by Kate Carr and guests.

Asphyxia's delirium continues in this episode with excerpts from a 1921 paranoid etymological tract - 'Puss in Pye Corner' - jutting into commuter-friendly low-budget podcast matter and dictaphonics.

Finally, a chance to inspect a British Library Suppressed Safe book is presented: 'Diving for Treasure' (1926) by G. Williams. Meanwhile, BBC Radio 4 implodes under its own gravitas, birthing a new star in the form of 'spoken word newspaper reports' from the early 2000s.

These mishaps befalling the narrator - filtered through newspaper bastardy - rehash quondam-embarrassments associated with bin-diving and aggressive Pure Volunteering.

Originally commissioned in 2022 as part of Radio Art Zone's tapestry of 22-hour radio productions, this project by Daniel R. Wilson is re-presented here in episodic form. Asphyxia hacks the antagonising systems which thwart and forestall projects (its name also acknowledges the asphyxiating atmosphere of long-form radio when made by a single person). It is a damaged would-be radio documentary exploring the Narnia of restricted access material and gatekept employment.

This episode features works by Morag Law & Ronan Doyle, TVO, Poe Sullard, Isobel McKenna, Various Networked Artists, Carrier, Inturist, BJ Nilsen, LABOUR, Points Of Friction, Orphax & PONI, Orphax, Diurnal Burdens & Matt Atkins, Orrest, Poly Gone, NWO and Jeff Brown.

An immersive psychosonic space, where sounds converse, collide and converge, featuring works, selections, edits, experiments, new music, non-music, archival objects, abstract artefacts, sound(system) and A/V art, pop, trash, noise, voice, and the associated mediums, processes and techniques that make up the ongoing audial investigations of Agents of the Culture Industry & OVT, all presented for art not profit.

In this episode:

"suspended ragamash, vocals and sirens"

Weekly compositions, sketches and motifs by Anastasia Freygang.

Field recordings, experimental narration, ragamash mixes, big time polyrhythmics including fantasy language and hearsay from IRL and the World Wide Web.

A monthly collection of audio experiments and listening objects with sound artist Matt Burnett from Berlin.

Ambient, folk, ritual, electronic, dub, free jazz and exploratory works selected by BroodingSideOfMadness.

Virgilio Oliveira explores the sonic environment in collaboration with Porto's Radio Manabras, presenting an hour of sound art and field recordings.

Sound collage, record spinning, havering, ear wonk and general head scratch with Dylan Nyoukis of the Chocolate Monk label.

Investigations of the Brazilian experimental music scene via Rio De Janeiro's Quintavant label in collaboration with Audio Rebel. With live performances and exploratory sounds produced in the context of Brazil's strange political situation, curated by Francisco Mazza, Bernando Oliveira and Pedro Azevedo.

This episode features music made by Naviar's community inspired by Kubota Shunko’s poem “cascade sounds / along a mountain path - / the blistering heat”.

To have your music featured on the show, participate in the Haiku music challenge.

Thirty minutes of experimental music made in response to a weekly haiku poem, curated by Marco Alessi of Naviar Records and Naviar's international community of composers.

This episode was made in collaboration with Jo Morrison.

Surrounded by sunlit waters at the Town Hard, where small boats launch into the Walton Mere and then on to the River Twizzle and on once more out to sea or further into the Essex marshes. Sounds drift ghostly in the air as seagulls swirl, and sunken wrecks resurface.

Littoral Transmissions meander through the sonic landscape of the River Lea from Stonebridge Lock to Leamouth. Recordings from the field converge with layers of sound to create an aural impression of the navigation.

In this episode, we share recent performances and pieces from friends and members of the collective, including Lou Barnell’s performance for Yarmonics Festival, a Moses Batikva live set from Hamburg, and a selection of works from Stephan Barrett’s conceptually eclectic mix of projects (one of which “known for its boundless appetite and complex system of multiple void-like stomachs”).

Resonance Extra radio pals Littoral Transmissions also share sessions recorded with absurdist poet James Worse.

Colliding Lines present live sessions, cross-genre collaborations and left-field recordings drawn from the London, UK and international experimental scenes; a long-form love letter to recorded audio as soundtrack, as sound art and as storyteller.

In this episode, Dani plays an eclectic mix of some hardcore, d-beat, cross-over thrash, and some blackened crust.

Maximum Rocknroll Radio is a weekly radio show and podcast featuring DIY punk, garage rock, hardcore, and more from around the world. A rotating cast of DJs pick the best of the best from MRR's astounding, ever-growing vinyl archive. You can find MRR Radio archives, specials and more on their website.

Our philosophy continues to be one of sharing conversations that urge a critical questioning of the lack of accessibility and diversity within the far-reaching topic of sonic practice, as well as strengthening communities through exchanging resources.

Collaborators and participants worldwide contribute to each Sound bath, bubbling up a concoction of offerings, unfinished thoughts and conversations with sound makers. Additionally, the mix is punctuated by excerpts of tracks made within the Foldable Sounds Project; the email chain, sonic equivalent of the Exquisite Corpse drawing game, upon which the collective was founded.

The Foldable Sounds Collective welcomes anything listenable to be tested in the waters. Settle down. Enjoy. Maybe, run that bubble bath.

The Foldable Sounds Collective presents Foldable Soundbath. The collective formed during the April 2020 lockdown and is composed of three artists: Daniela Maria Geraci, Lucy Rose Cunningham and Isabelle Pead. Individually dealing with sound as an archival, performative and narrational tool, collectively they interrogate sound’s potential to sonically transport the imagination outside one’s four walls, drawing on a global need for freedom of movement.

Running weekly, the series will broadcast the entire catalogue so far in chronological order, continuing here with Through the Billboard Promised Land Without Ever Stopping by Derek Jarman.

Previously unheard and unreleased audio recording of Derek Jarman reading his only work of narrative fiction, Through the Billboard Promised Land Without Ever Stopping (1971, 55 minutes).

numbered + handmade in an edition of 80 copies only; three riso-printed cigarette cards (of a possible six) with stills by Derek Jarman ‘Through the...’ and four-sided foldout with reproductions of pages from the artist's diary

This release has been made possible by House Sparrow Press, an imprint of Prototype Publishing, and with the support of The Estate of Derek Jarman. There is a special edition of 26, lettered A-Z, comprising the cassette and the fully illustrated book featuring Jarman’s text; a foreword by Philip Hoare; afterword by Declan Wiffen; memoir by Michael Ginsborg; and final word from Gareth Evans, signed by all the contributors. This option is only available direct at purge.xxx/purrrrrj020

purge.xxx releases music. It has been celebrated by The Wire magazine for its ‘disregard for the music industry, self-promotion and prevailing cultural norms,’ and an ‘ability to elevate distinct works and the obscure artists behind them.’ purge.xxx only releases music physically, unless a digital alternative has specifically been requested by a collaborating artist. It considers even the recording a compromise, but advocates things.