1) Mondlane - 'I hear her call: Salome...? Danu...? Come ah-come...'

‘I hear her call: Salome...? Danu...? Come ah-come...’ is a surreal folkloristic sonic tale or a journey through memories encountered in a fever dream. Scenic echoes intimately evolve, looped until they burst into strange atmospheres and rhythms. We meet a hopelessly entangled voice, haunted and lost. Bewildered by fragmented distortions she attempts to unpick a series of flickering scenes. Delving into the emotional world of both adult and child. Something significant that happened. Imprinted in memory. Amorphous and vague. A lament. The forest is crying against a blurred background. A ritual unfolds, lifts a spell of silence. Hidden behind the noise she remains indistinct. Vibrant matters pulsating. A gatekeeper of invisible worlds. An empty corridor filled with footsteps. She flees into the river. A ghostly figure. A cry. A flower left on the kitchen table. A chant.

She leads us through chaotic waters of electro acoustic instrumentation, field recordings, noise, singing, spoken narration, decaying tape loops, and a rich tapestry of both analogue and digital experimental recording processes. Mocking, hiding, guiding, waking, haunting, lost, mourning, grieving, she runs through rhythmic glimpses, moving between nuances of lightness and downfall.

Commissioned for Radiophrenia 2025 with the support of Creative Scotland.

2) Matana Roberts - 'Chasing Hopes on the Star Atlantic'

How can you use the art of sound to make painful memory joyful, without negating the importance of painful experience? What is myth? What is awe? How can you honor, yet document the unknown? Where do the personal, cultural, emotional politics collide in a rendering of sonicity? What does it mean to endure?

These are questions that currently fascinate me.  My current work is focused on collaging experiential process through soundscape exploration, based on unique embodied experiences. 

Just before the world shutdown in 2019 I voyaged on an English cargo ship from the United Kingdom to North America. I wanted to know…to embody the motion, movements of not only a history but of a wonder around sounds, memory, what we carry, what we leave behind whether by choice or force.

I carried with me a small “roberts radio”, that refused to work of course, b/c there was no signal. So I kept an audio diary and from that, a series of field recordings, and footage I made during this time,  I present to you a radio collage, of a life changing moment for me not only as an artist, but as a person, entitled “Chasing Hopes on the Star Atlantic…”

‘Chasing Hopes on the Star Atlantic’ was a co-commission between Radiophrenia and Kunst zum Hören, Osterreich 1 produced with the support of Creative Scotland.  

3) Catherine Street - 'Thought feels'

There is a layering of non-verbal vocalisations that have a comical or playful feel to them. The same voice, in a whisper, repeats the questions ‘is thought an event?’ and ‘is my body an event?’. The work explores verbal and non-verbal layering. The silly sounds coming from the body are interrupted by something more cerebral or philosophical, contrasting thought and feeling. This work relates to research around the body-mind in its various forms, a practice of meditation and recovery from a serious illness. At the same time the artist is interested in the idea of ‘the event’ whether that be a thought, a movement, a body, a mistake, a trauma.

This monthly program features highlights and commissions from the 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 across Glasgow, 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 a number of 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 as a co-operative funded through Creative Scotland’s Open Project Funding.