Sunday, September 09, 2012

Abandon Reason, Episode 1

The first episode of a radio sort-of-show I've put together from recordings made in the car park with various amazing people is now streaming over on Curious Broadcast (the player is about halfway down that page, just after the list of contributors). There'll be 7 more episodes after that, airing fortnightly, with the odd bits of debris washing up on this Soundcloud.

After sitting on so much incredible material it feels good to get it out into the world and have friends and strangers alike hear it. When visiting the space by myself or showing it to other people there was never really any plan for the recordings, it just seemed right that everything be recorded (well, almost everything). After two years this amounted to 80+ gigabytes of sound, photographs and videos. The idea to present it in the form of a radio show only came a few months ago when talking to Ray Wingnut (after a Sideshow play) about Curious Broadcast, a new internet radio station based in Tallaght on the lookout for something from the more experimental end. It was semi-impulsive, putting together a first episode and sending off a proposal to John, the guy in charge there, but it felt like the right way of going about it, of bringing these dark burrowings up into the light. And I'm happy with how it turned out. As much as possible each recording is given its own space, with very little overlap. This was important to me as otherwise it could turn into one long forcibly textured piece. I wanted each recording to be about itself, to hopefully communicate what it was like at that moment to be there experiencing it (which is an impossible aim but trying is its own goal), rather than impose a form of my own on them by mixing them with other recordings.

The first episode features Aaron Coyne, Brigid Power Ryce, Vicky Langan, Gavin Prior, Dave Colohan and Alice McDowell. Episode 2 will air on the 19th of September.