Brushbox Mountain by Richard Kennedy
At Diffusion, one of our favourite activities is introducing people who’ve never worked with audio before to the wonderful world of sonic arts and composition! This time, we had the pleasure of bringing Richard into the fold.
Richard was planning a trip to the stunning Northern Rivers region of NSW, Australia, so I handed him a ZOOM recorder and encouraged him to give it a go. His reaction? “What do I do with this?” But since he’s got a knack for snapping gorgeous photos on his iPhone, I told him to think of it the same way—just capturing beautiful snaps, but with sound.
When he returned, we sat down, set up Audacity on his laptop, and I guided him through some basic editing and listened to his piece come to life.
Now, why not join Richard on his journey? It starts at the Brunswick Heads breakwater, heads up river towards Mullumbimby, then meanders around the High Street and Market at the Showgrounds. From there, we head up Left Bank Road towards Mullumbimby Creek, stop by to visit Barry Reeves at his place, “Brushbox Mountain”, and enjoy drinks on the balcony during a tropical downpour. We wrap up by wandering through the bush and garden, and finally ending our adventure at the beautiful beach of Byron Bay.

This is a montage created from the Radio as a Space and a Material community workshop with DiffusionFM held at 107 Redfern. For this event we invited the community to contemplate alternative radio space. We also invited the wonderful Hethre Contant to participate which inevitably included an appearance of The Weekly Dream Report. Also big thanks to Ryan Morris for sharing his other consciousness with us.

Here are the results of workshop participants enjoying performative experiments. During these “Jams” the usual suspects were utilised – extremely low-powered terrestrial radio wave technologies, other electromagnetic and time-based sensing tools, telephones, walkie-talkies, computers, deep sea cables, whatever paraphernalia came to hand and August Black’s telematic browser app Mezcal.

Most of the material was recorded using a very old H1 ZOOM with only one functioning microphone and mobile phones. The results are delightfully LoFi and in glorious mono!

https://august.black/

https://107.org.au/

Peter Blamey, Five Motley Exchanges (2023) https://peterblamey.net/

photovoltaic (solar) panel, guitar pickup, biscuit tin lid, portable amplifier, 3-volt electric motor, crank torch, laser pointer

1. Flies interrupt the sunlight reaching a submerged solar panel.

2. Water flows over, around and through a guitar pickup stuck to a biscuit tin lid.

3. A small electric motor produces current as it is rolled over rocks then dropped into the creek.

4. Crank torches shine on a solar panel wedged in flowing water.

5. Cascading water defects laser light directed at a submerged solar panel, before sunlight breaks through the cloud cover.

Five Motley Exchanges documents several performances along a short stretch of Stony Creek, a small waterway on Darug land in Sydney’s north. Like many similar locations across the metropolitan area, this spot is valued by locals as green space, but otherwise seems subject to neglect. Native plants, fungi and animals (insects, birds, lizards, possums, fruit bats and the occasional wallaby) mix with introduced flora and a range of anthropogenic factors, including garbage (plastic, metal, ceramic, timber), cut branches and trunks left to rot, runoff from roads and drains, and noise from nearby bridge traffic and overhead planes, making it a rich and mingled place.

These five performances are interactions between me, a small bunch of devices, and the creek itself, together realising a somewhat variegated or motley range of energetic responses. Water flows over, on and sometimes through the devices (at times activating their resonant properties), as the same time as they register the effects of both sunlight and artificial light, of landforms and gravity, and of my own physical contributions (cranking, pointing, holding, dragging and rolling, etc.), combining the rush of natural energies with the hiss and hum of electronics. Their outputs were often simultaneously amplified into the surrounding space, muddling things further by introducing noises sourced from under the water into the air.

Some of these interactions push the physical limits and operational logic of the devices involved, and perhaps unsurprisingly, the sounds produced were fairly unruly. The work here retains much of their rough and ready character (after all, why shave a cactus?). Together, the materials, the creek and me engage with a poetics found in transduction. Sunlight and lasers mingle underwater, with insects and amp hiss, electrical crackle and splashing cascades.

Extra special thanks go to DiffusionFM for the invitation to produce this work.

Peter Blamey is an artist based in Sydney, Australia, on Gadigal land. His practice is often sound-focussed and accomplished via an economy of means, and includes performances, videos, recordings and installations. Broadly speaking, his work explores the interconnected themes of energies and residues, often through reimagining our everyday encounters with mundane materials and technologies and the physical world, and also by considering how they relate to our experiences of energy generation, use and waste. https://peterblamey.net/

This brunch residency occurred every Saturday morning from 11am (ish) to 2pm (ish) in Frontyard’s Frontyard Marrackville NSW. Hethre and Jon used this time to create process-driven radio experiments using the Mezcal audio streaming platform developed by August Black (https://august.black/mezcal/), extremely low-powered terrestrial radio wave technologies, other electromagnetic and time-based sensing tools. Here is an edit constructed from some of those brunches. https://www.frontyardprojects.org

Here is a collage of various “live” stream sessions from the studio and street events at 107 Redfern NSW during the first Mezcal Radio Workshop. A group of workshop participants found themselves enjoying improvised sonic performances, interactions with anyone or anything from anywhere on the planet and whatever they fancied as the mood took them. They explored the possibilities of radio-space via telephones, walkie-talkies, computers, deep sea cables, whatever paraphernalia came to hand and August Black’s telematic browser app Mezcal.
They felt this slice of sound captured the “spirit of adventure” and the surreal chaos of the group’s endeavours…
Had any amusing dreams recently? 107Difffusion is proudly a Wave Farm Transmit Partner so you can enjoy checking in with us and sharing on Saturdays around 11ish AEST…. And don’t forget – the artist asleep is the artist at work!

https://107.org.au/
https://august.black/mezcal/

Machines Making Machines started four years ago as a daily exercise in journalistic sonic recordings. Tracks were actualised using both analogue and digital synthesizers and a variety of effects pedals. Created as single-take improvised happenings with minimal editing and mixing done live, each track was then uploaded as a personal online record.
Recording sessions have now metamorphosised. Tracks are still created under an improvised meditative state though are now revisited and refined with a reflective consideration on the initial intent. Drawing heavily from the ability of sound to induce imagery, tracks begun to take on a Four-Act Structure akin to storytelling.
A curated merging of tracks, both old and new, this piece is best considered as a ritualistic undertaking transporting the listener. The work explores textures and tonalities of both abrasive industrial percussive sounds cogitating a claustrophobic surreality, contrasted to ethereal symphonic states of saudade.

Track list:
1. MFGS 0:27
2. DFM10 5:24
3. DFM Part I 5:42
4. MFACPTN 9:18
5. MFPNP 13:54
6. DFM_RSBT 17:20
7. GMNRSY 20:34
8. MFFDD 21:19

Turn the lights down low, and the volume up loud.

. . .

A special Thank you to Jon Panther, Sebastian Sequoiah-Grayson and Katie Ring.

. . .

Machines Making Machines Making Machines Making Machines Making Machines

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Have you, in the last few months, experienced bumps in the night? Strange sounds that seem to come out of the aether? Glowing orbs of light in midnight kitchens? Do you feel that everything may be collapsing around you, and the fragile veil between this world and the next may just be tearing at the seams?

Then ask yourself have you also, in the last few months, seen David Bryan and Joe DiPietro’s rock operatic epic “Diana: The Musical, either on the Broadway stage or via the magic of Netflix?

Could these two phenomena be related?

Ergo Phizmiz, Depresstival and their extremely angry guinea-pigs, take the plunge into the spooky netherworld of high-budget historical figure musical theatre, in a ghost story for Christmas that will leave you wanting to wear exclusively pink and hanging out with small, furry, cute animals.

Here at diffusionfm there is nothing we enjoy more than having as little control as possible over what gets transmitted out into the universe! One of our favourite arrangements is to fire-up a rather ancient PC thats sits lurking amongst layers of dust atop an old desk – then simply open 3 instances of VLC, populate each playlist with all wavfiles on the HD and and hit random shuffle mode – very primitive but thats the way we like it!…. so allow us to share with you a somewhat edited version of a recent Sunday’s controlled-out-of-controllness.

Time in isolation has turned into an amorphous mass. Repetitive housebound activities render even the most well-organised of us struggling to keep track of time. Desperately seeking to extract an iota of excitement, mundane occurrences are seen in new light. With a pair of Cageian ears and through the assistance of trusty intoxicants, the busy street by the window turns into a clamorous symphony; each vehicle becomes a distinct instrument, with their different tyres, transmissions, and powertrains inducing unique timbres within this accidental composition.

Parahrono is part artistic expression, part reassurance; as long as vehicles are passing through, the world is yet to collapse. Focusing on the sound, the mind plays its usual tricks. Time becomes distorted; rhythms gallop alike drunken louts, textures intertwine in their frantic pursuit for attachment. The mundane becomes superb, and vice versa. Queens Drive in Childwall was recorded through the windows of a ground floor flat, the composer’s own isolated bubble. A pair of condenser microphones are poking through the blinds, and another pair of contacts attached to the glass, itself now a resonator, victim to the violent gusts of air blown by the passing vehicles. As long as vehicles are passing through, the world is yet to collapse. https://manolimoriaty.com

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Subespai – “City circles”: sound collage on urban canvas
Scene. A nondescript hum smothers the echoes of a distant playground. The eeriness intensifies as the afternoon loses the daily battle against the evening soundscape. “Where is this?”. The sonic familiarity puts the name of a place on the tip of the tongue right as the movement changes, or does it? The hum left unannounced, that’s a fact; now there’s something else filling the space, something deeper, more spiritual even. Repetition gives way to flow; quietness prevails, for a while at least. Feedback turns into flares as the night falls. “Is this still the West?”. Continental lines may or may not have been crossed, the only way to find out is to wander further, facing novelty until everything becomes known again. A faint sadness lingers in the air. End of scene.
Composed & performed by Subespai (Mauri Edo). Recorded by Matthew Syres. Subespai is Mauri Edo, a Sydney-based sound artist working with found sound, repetition and volume to explore and express complex thoughts and ideas on existence, society and the individual.
www.subespai.net