Show 248: Albert & Serge by Erik Samakh

Erik Samakh was in residence in Cameroon by the end of December 2008. Thanks to his partnership with a Pallisco-certified logging company that implements sustainable forest management, he had the chance to visit the forest area in the upper Nyong division of Eastern Cameroon.

He meant to bring the forest sounds back to the urban space, as a way to highlight the break that is often felt by inhabitants in large urban mega-cities .

A sensory way to remind the major importance – on symbolic, emotional and environmental levels – of a forest that physical distance could devote to a silent degradation.

For Radia, Erik Samakh offers an immersive experience in the most remote zone of Makalayathat mountains, a quasi-primary forest, still untapped, where ape calls keep resounding in a near-dialogue with humans, Albert and Serge…

Show 246: Memento: Internationale by Adrian Hall

This an atmospheric work for radio which takes place inside the head, and the history, of an elderly man.

He dwells on moments and places he may have been, and the life in turn of his father.
The work is initially set in the shaving mirror of his home, and touches on mortality, and the trades of working men everywhere, be they learned in the military, or as an apprentice.
There is too a hint of criminal violence. Another way of making a living.
A recurring theme of blood, consumer objects and the nostalgic history of radio itself allows him to meander in his mind, and to reflect on a life of change. A single human voice is contrasted with recordings of vintage radio commercials extolling the virtues of the workers behind production lines, now derelict: and the narrations of the old man are largely carried by synthesised voices from a computer. The purring of a cat overtakes and completes his domestic reveries.