Radio Flatlands - the even-shortest-ever-lived radio station. or, it wasn't just any old pie
Jan 17, 2022, 08:42 AM
Radio art & sound edit: Tara Downs
Writer & stand up poet: Jonny Fluffypunk
Jonny Fluffypunk: "One of the joys of Short-wave listening that has captivated me all these years is the pure randomness and unpredictability of the experience...'
I was inspired by the explanation that accompanied the original recording; the listener surprised and thrilled by the sudden interruption of unfamiliar station idents and snippets of broadcast… so how about another, even shorter-lived station, ‘interrupting the interrupter’? What comes through on the original recording (some sort of banal anti-smoking advice) is rendered strange and exotic by virtue of it swirling, unexpected, out of the ether, from somewhere unknown on the far side of the world; our shrinking planet suddenly seems vast and mysterious again. So imagine you’re listening from a Polynesian island, in the dead of night, and how- distorted by distance, layered under interference and leaping out of nowhere- the voice of an aggrieved Englishman, exiled to a friend’s shed after a row over a tinned pie, might somehow sound similarly magical. So often when surfing across the wilder weirdnesses of the radio dial the imagination is forced to come up with some sort of flimsy raft of narrative, lashed together from incomplete, ambiguous and incoherent snippets, if for no other reason than so one can get to sleep."
Technical Production & Sound Editing: "A ritual attempt to invoke the gods of otherness and unleash the ghosts in the machine. Text and station ident recorded using 1986 Casio SL-1 keyboard and broken SM58 microphone, fed through Boss loop pedal and recorded on worn-out cassette on Tascam 244 portastudio. Result then played out via MW test transmitter and finally digitally captured for this project crackling from a cranky 1940's Phillips bakelite radio. Then sent to Tara in the Netherlands for further burial into the static... "
Tara: "Jonny and I are similarly entranced by the magic of radio and divinations on shortwaves. This curiosity brought us together as colleagues and provides a constant, erratic wave that runs through Radio Droogdok & our Radiophonic Hut project.
This was a lot of fun, mixing Jonny’s story into the original piece (picked up by DXer Colin Newell), peppering with field recordings from my own collection (made when resuscitating old radios) , playing with rhythm, distance and proximity to evoke both the feelings of isolation of a lone broadcaster calling out through the ether, and the impulse to connect with the ‘other’ out there. I love both the contrasts between the transmissions and, strangely, the parallels. The seeking of solace in an invisible scattered congregation, and something of a therapeutic, self-help, ‘agony aunt’ quality. And there’s an irony to our piece: we really do both sit in our respective home-made sheds, playing with collections of beautiful old kit, swearing, experimenting and figuring out how to make it work, and how to reach out there into the impossible vastness of reverberating static..."
Writer & stand up poet: Jonny Fluffypunk
Jonny Fluffypunk: "One of the joys of Short-wave listening that has captivated me all these years is the pure randomness and unpredictability of the experience...'
I was inspired by the explanation that accompanied the original recording; the listener surprised and thrilled by the sudden interruption of unfamiliar station idents and snippets of broadcast… so how about another, even shorter-lived station, ‘interrupting the interrupter’? What comes through on the original recording (some sort of banal anti-smoking advice) is rendered strange and exotic by virtue of it swirling, unexpected, out of the ether, from somewhere unknown on the far side of the world; our shrinking planet suddenly seems vast and mysterious again. So imagine you’re listening from a Polynesian island, in the dead of night, and how- distorted by distance, layered under interference and leaping out of nowhere- the voice of an aggrieved Englishman, exiled to a friend’s shed after a row over a tinned pie, might somehow sound similarly magical. So often when surfing across the wilder weirdnesses of the radio dial the imagination is forced to come up with some sort of flimsy raft of narrative, lashed together from incomplete, ambiguous and incoherent snippets, if for no other reason than so one can get to sleep."
Technical Production & Sound Editing: "A ritual attempt to invoke the gods of otherness and unleash the ghosts in the machine. Text and station ident recorded using 1986 Casio SL-1 keyboard and broken SM58 microphone, fed through Boss loop pedal and recorded on worn-out cassette on Tascam 244 portastudio. Result then played out via MW test transmitter and finally digitally captured for this project crackling from a cranky 1940's Phillips bakelite radio. Then sent to Tara in the Netherlands for further burial into the static... "
Tara: "Jonny and I are similarly entranced by the magic of radio and divinations on shortwaves. This curiosity brought us together as colleagues and provides a constant, erratic wave that runs through Radio Droogdok & our Radiophonic Hut project.
This was a lot of fun, mixing Jonny’s story into the original piece (picked up by DXer Colin Newell), peppering with field recordings from my own collection (made when resuscitating old radios) , playing with rhythm, distance and proximity to evoke both the feelings of isolation of a lone broadcaster calling out through the ether, and the impulse to connect with the ‘other’ out there. I love both the contrasts between the transmissions and, strangely, the parallels. The seeking of solace in an invisible scattered congregation, and something of a therapeutic, self-help, ‘agony aunt’ quality. And there’s an irony to our piece: we really do both sit in our respective home-made sheds, playing with collections of beautiful old kit, swearing, experimenting and figuring out how to make it work, and how to reach out there into the impossible vastness of reverberating static..."
Composition by Radio Droogdok - Tara Downs in collaboration with Jonny Fluffypunk.
Part of the Shortwave Transmissions project, documenting and reimagining the sounds of shortwave radio - find out more and see the whole project at https://citiesandmemory.com/shortwave