American radio artist Gregory Whitehead is featured this week. First we hear his "Shake, Rattle, Roll" work, a radio manifesto dating from 1993. He writes: "I used every category of material at my disposal, and every compositional and editing technique, explored in shorter castaways; digital audio tape was part of my studio by then, used in tension and interplay with my workhorse Otari reel-to-reels. To decay or not to decay, among my questions. Made during a very intense period of two weeks for New American Radio, the hybrid assemblage explores themes of structural entropy in relation to free play; the living dancing with the dead; the bottomless cave mixed with the ephemeral utopia; songs collapsed into screams and scrambles; language elucidated and on the verge of disintegration." Second tune in "Song For a Headless Apache," a bit of toy theater from Whitehead from 2004. And finally, "The Bottom of the Mind," a conversation between a Host and a conjured revolutionary cyclotherapist Guest. Originally broadcast on the BBC as part of the late-night series "Talk to Sleep," it was commissioned by John Dryden/Goldhawk in 1999 and is an exploration of the ubiquitous radio interview format, yet with Whitehead playing host, guests. and all band instruments.

Welcome to "The Radio Art Hour," a show where art is not just on the radio, but is the radio. "The Radio Art Hour" draws from the Wave Farm Broadcast Radio Art Archive, an online resource that aims to identify, coalesce, and celebrate historical and contemporary international radio artworks made by artists around the world, created specifically for terrestrial AM/FM broadcast, whether it be via commercial, public, community, or independent transmission. Come on a journey with us as radio artists explore broadcast radio space through poetic resuscitations and playful celebrations/subversions of the complex relationship between senders and receivers in this hour of radio about radio as an art form. "The Radio Art Hour" features introductions from Philip Grant and Tom Roe, and from Wave Farm Radio Art Fellows Karen Werner, Jess Speer, and Andy Stuhl. The Conet Project's recordings of numbers radio stations serve as interstitial sounds. Go to wavefarm.org for more information about "The Radio Art Hour" and Wave Farm's Radio Art Archive.