ARCHIVE

‘Signalman’ by Sarah Angliss - Embracing and updating the Radiophonic tradition, Sarah Angliss presents a spatialised sound poem inspired by The Signalman, Charles Dickens’ ghost tale for the industrial age. In this fractured retelling, Angliss plays with psychoacoustics and liminal sounds to conjure spectral resonances, ghostly cries and the gloom and dampness of a deep railway cutting. As sounds and music unfold, an isolated signalman becomes all too aware of a future horror he can do nothing to undo. This piece is created in collaboration with vocal artist Colin Uttley. For maximum spatial effect, please listen with headphones. The child was played by Nicholas Gowing.

‘Aerial Holding Hands’ by Catriona Shaw – “Prior to the Internet, I grew up on a Scottish island, feeling deprived of many a thing. Popular radio was broadcast on both AM and FM, but due to harsh weather conditions, inconvenient landscapes and general far-awayness, signals often experienced interference or were limited. At midnight, the music I listened to on the crackly but more reliable AM would be interrupted half-way through by a jolly male voice, repeating a warning that broadcasting on this frequency would, due to a government decision, be phased out altogether to be replaced by better, more modern FM. Night after night, I lay in contorted positions in my bed, holding onto a wire aerial so I could receive and cling onto a mangled FM signal, all in a desperate battle to preserve my grasp on the here and now of mainstream pop and contemporary late night chatter. This is an experimental narrative that attempts to re-enact my experience as a radio listener, and consolidate two opposing characters: the slick hiss of FM and the dull thud of AM.”