This monthly program features highlights and commissions from Glasgow art radio station Radiophrenia.

Presented on an annual basis, Radiophrenia is a temporary art radio station – a two-week exploration into current trends in sound and transmission arts. Broadcasting live from Glasgow’s Centre for Contemporary Arts, the station promotes radio as an art form, encouraging challenging and radical new approaches to the medium. Each year, the broadcast schedule includes a series of newly commissioned radio works, live shows, pre-recorded features and 12 Live-to-Air performances. The majority of the program is made up from selections submitted to an international open call for sound art and radio works. Radiophrenia is managed by Mark Vernon and Barry Burns and is funded through Creative Scotland’s Open Project Funding with additional support from CCA Glasgow.

Radiophrenia Redux 2024 Episode 7 – Programme Notes

 Alëna Korolëva / Alexandra Spence

1)

Artist Name: Alexandra Spence

Work Title: Sound diary: Sept-Nov 2022

Description:

“Whilst travelling and touring across Europe in Sept-Nov 2022, instead of field recording - I made short descriptive notes on environmental sounds that piqued my interest. I had been feeling disillusioned with field recording and keeping these notes allowed me to examine what it was I enjoyed in each sound I encountered. For this piece I have used my text descriptions as a kind of score for miniatures, attempting to reimagine and recreate these sounds using various, unrelated sources; allowing these descriptions to re-compose musical memory.”

+Truck reversing out of town square layered deep resonant drone, like music, Kristiansand 

+Nescafe in hotel room bubbly mid pitch rising

+Bathroom door in teateret squeaky staccato texture, Kristiansand 

+Saxophone noise show of shower handle in Brunswick hotel, Glasgow

+Gentle squeal of gate at Hanley court, London

+Man in front of me on train Cologne to Berlin, snapping a piece of the window blind gently creating an elastic band resonance snap sound, blended really well with the Jenny Hval album I was simultaneously listening to 

+Cheery Berlin tram-stop jingle 

+Footsteps on cobbled stairs in graffiti alley way, near Intendente, Lisbon

+Internal music on train to Paris

+Sirens across Europe, bouncing, encircling, spinning off buildings around the city (all the EU sirens sound the same)

+2x Cherry pickers in the Tate turbine hall installing Cecilia Vicuña, glissandi drones as they move. Striking, shifting resonant harmonies 

+Squeaky swing - metal harmonics in a park on Garibaldi Palestrina, Milan

+Listening to Kendrick - the Heart Part 5 at take-off, voice awash with loud engine sound

+Trolley in Bratislava old town bumping on rails and echoing off buildings - deep club bass tones 

+Man rubbing a twig against the granite footpath at the Slavin memorial, Bratislava 

+Voices of Italian tourists bouncing off Soviet memorial staircase, Bratislava 

+Someone sneezing in a quiet section of a violin and double bass improv set in Stockholm 

+Rhythm of water dripping off boat into Stockholm harbour

+Squeaky mooring of boat and ramp, Stockholm harbour 

+Rain falling on Filmhuset, Stockholm

2)

Artist Name: Alëna Korolëva

Work Title: Premonitions

Description:

“Whenever I go, I can't help but notice signs of a looming change. I eavesdrop on conversations of creatures big and small, and like me, they seem uneasy and uncertain about what's to come. Something is in the air, dark clouds gather, winds are shifting course. Amidst the confusion and restlessness, the voices of natural and human-made worlds blend in a worrisome symphony. This piece is an ode to anticipation, to the beauty of different forms of life on the brink of the sixth mass extinction. Joining in the chorus are the American toad, northern winds, an old kettle, mr. Cat, tawny owl, crickets, domestic chickens and pigs, trumpeter swans, honey bees, truck horns, cormorants, seagulls and other elements and critters.”

alenakoroleva.com

Commissioned for Radiophrenia 2023 with the support of Creative Scotland.