Against the backdrop of Slovakia’s terrifying socio-political turmoil, this documentary radio piece explores Bratislava’s vibrant and courageous independent music and cultural scene and some of the community spaces in which it develops. Now they are facing their biggest challenge, to keep it alive and kicking.
We’ve been there (for the bad parts mostly), and we are still stuck there.
From Skopje to Bratislava, with love.
…
Recorded and edited by Gjorgji Janevski (summer 2024)
Additional interviews and recordings by Vid Bešter (Radio Študent)
Voices: Jonáš Gruska, Matúš Kobolka, Adela Mede, Poli, Daniel Vadas, Janneke Van Der Putten, Oliver from the garages, Olja Triaška Stefanović, Rozalia Vlaskova, Tomaš Hučko.
Music excerpts from Adela Mede, Bolka, Jonáš Gruska, Fissures, Patrick Balthrop, Rrrr
The publication of this article is part of PERSPECTIVES – the new label for independent, constructive, multiperspective journalism. The project PERSPECTIVES is being implemented by seven editorial teams from Central Eastern Europe under the leadership of the Goethe-Institut. The author of this article participated in the PERSPECTIVES Journalists-in-Residence Programme at the Goethe-Institut Bratislava.
No matter where we live in the world, we all feel alone from time to time, some of us more than others, some of us to the point we can’t bear it anymore … this collection of new works entitled Sonic Hugs is a reminder that we are not alone. With this objective at hand, I invited nine of Australia’s most distinctive & esteemed artists to create original new works that express their interpretation of a “sonic hug.” At the time, I remember wondering, just how will these artists combine the ideas of “sonic” and “hug” into their new works? If we explore the word “hug” by itself, then we usually start to think of the following: hug … to anticipate a hug, to be hugged, to have been hugged, and that research has shown that a hug can reduce feelings of loneliness and the harmful physical effects of stress. A hug can also boost feel-good hormones such as dopamine and serotonin, the antidepressant hormone that reduces feelings of loneliness, controls anxiety and elevates mood. Psychologically, a hug builds trust, boosts self-esteem, and creates a sense of safety, creating a pathway towards a deeper connection.
But this was not just a hug, but a Sonic Hug … then I also remembered a quote from an interview I did for my PhD with Andrew McLennan about his experiences as an ABC radio producer working with artists at The Listening Room program where he explained, “But artists don’t always do expected things …”[1] In this context, McLennan is discussing the potential awkwardness between the public media programming directives and the artist’s desire for creative, uncensored, boundless possibilities. While with the Sonic Hugs collection, there are differences (e.g. there is no overarching government programming directive other than the request to compose a sonic hug), artistsboth delivered works that met and challenged my expectations, all of which I found sonically highly stimulating and was touched by. What emerged from this diverse mix and treatments of the subject matter is a multi-faceted creative exploration of embrace, connectedness, and community.
If we listen deeper into these individual new works, in the order that they will be presented, we can hear that with Cat Hope’s 7 Options (as performed by The Low Tone Orchestra), we are listening to how musicians empathise with each other during a live recording as they are “moving in and out of each other’s timbre,” in effect exploring varying degrees of sonic connections. With Ros Bandt’s Sonic Hugs, we enter a personal autobiographical soundscape of tenderness that, as Bandt explains, “metamorphose into a new magical energy empowering love, kindness, sharing, community, co-operation and selflessness, a larger hug from nature and the cosmos.” In Eve Klein’s Mantra of Enfolding we imagine our first embrace and connection as a zygote in our mother’s womb. Robert Sazdov’s “I Cried” Spasovden, electroacoustic compositional structure is based on “20-second sonic sections that aim to deliver 12 sonic hugs.” Next, Stephen Adams brings us Close To Your Ears in which a single vocal gesture develops and is augmented with other elements to create intimacy, as Adams asks the question, “What is a sonic hug?” With, Claire ‘Furchick’ Pannell’s Berjalan, amongst other things, reaches across cultural boundaries by using music as a type of universal language. In Jim Denley’s Mixmaster Troposphere we explore embracing the Australian environment and place and is intended as a sonic hug to the Aboriginal people (Wayilwan, Gamilaraay and Wiradjuri) who had previously gathered on the remote site in the Warrumbungle National Park where the work is recorded. With David Chesworth’s Cohesion Calisthenics we are listening to the “personal experiences of embodied hugs and being in larger social gatherings, which we sometimes struggle to be part of.” Finally, with Colin Black’s Embosomed, we are exploring the light and shades of embrace, a reaching out for connection and fragility.
I now invite you all to open your ears to this new collection of works that affords vulnerability, speaks from different levels and dimensions and brings focus to the need for more interpersonal/social connectedness and cohesion.
Colin Black, August 2024
Download the album from https://thissoniclife.bandcamp.com/album/sonic-hugs
Find more info here (pdf).
Artwork by Nuša Smolič / Instagram: nusa.smolic
“Stopcock” was recorded July-August 2023, with malfunctioning Walkmans playing loose parts of themselves (speakers) rather than cassettes.
Bio:
Clinton Green makes something akin to music. He has been active in Australian experimental music since the 1990s as a recording and performing artist, curator, facilitator, writer and researcher. He has worked with unconventional approaches to guitars, turntables and found objects as tools for new forms of musical expression. He has also worked with dancers, theatre and performance artists in improvised collaborative situations, and has developed a performance practice incorporating projections. Clinton runs the Shame File Music label and writes on/researches historical and contemporary aspects of Australian experimental music. He has completed artist residencies in Taiwan (2015) and Cradle Mountain, Tasmania (2017), and has performed/exhibited in Canada, Germany, Spain, Japan, Taiwan, New Zealand, and throughout Australia. His current interests include using deconstructed Walkmans as beat-generating machines, and processing text via compositional procedures and cassettes.
Photo credit – Colin Hodson
“The Whole World Stopped…” is a collaborative compilation of field recordings, a patchwork of making music and narrating, underedited ad hoc experiment, and also a celebration of friendship, a soundscape where two friends meet—Joana and Stefan, both of them colleagues at Kanal 103.
Joana is a multi-instrumentalist, though her main focus is classical guitar. She does use both classical and electric guitar throughout the recording, as well as bontempi electro-acoustic keyboard and goblet drum. Three minutes into this experimental piece, you can hear Stefan’s voice, first telling about a street scene he witnessed downtown Skopje, then reading a poem from Elizabeth Bishop (“At the Fishhouses”) and a short story from Franz Kafka (“Before the Law”). Finally, in the conclusion, a fusion of washing machine centrifuge and a mandola played with a violin bow.
The work is an undisguised communication between music and storytelling, scarcely premeditated, if at all. Most of it is recorded at Partizan Print, a studio of independent artists in Skopje, and very good friends and collaborators with Kanal 103.
Created by Joana Risteska, classic guitar master and multi-instrumentalist, and Stefan Alijevikj, fiction writer and sound seeker. You can follow their radio shows on Kanal 103 Sunday and Tuesday evenings respectively.
Greatest Hits by Elektro Kultura
Elektro Kultura is the solo project by Vladimir Muratovski Divo – a punk and social poet hailing from the streets of Skopje, Macedonia.
On Skopje’s Liberation Day (13.11.2022), he had his second, long awaited live performance at Kanal 103 radio. After he finished his repertoire, the packed crowd in the studio wanted for more. He briefly answered: “Real punks don’t do encore”.
This is the slightly edited recording of our little off programme afterparty.
The episode is an audio recording of the performance “Confutatis – What are the heroes made of?”, premiered on 28.10.2022 in Prishtina, Kosovo, as part of the Manifesta 14, the European Nomadic Biennial. It’s been slightly edited for the purposes of the radia.fm format.
“Why do some people become heroes and others not? What kind of shining lights do we need, and of what might they be made? Skopje-based artist Velimir Zernovski joins forces with the Physical Performative Theater ensemble to explore these and other questions around the politics of power, marginalization and belonging. Instigated by Biljana Dimitrova, the performance enacts rituals of mourning for the living beings we have lost and are losing, many of them through neglect.”
“Confutatis – what are heroes made of?” is a performance by Velimir Zernovski in collaboration with Kolektiv Veternica & Trisomija 21, both from Skopje.
Music by Joana Risteska & Filip Mitrov, based on the motifs of the Macedonian traditional folk song “I Was Born With Pain” (So maki sum se rodila).
Photo by Jelena Belikj
Recorded and edited by Gjorgji Janevski
In loving memory of Filip Mitrov
Trashkot is the name under which artists Jo Caimo and Sjoerd Leijten have been making radio since 2018 on Radio Centraal 106.7 FM in Antwerp. SONIC COLLECTIVITY is a collage piece created from their extensive audio archive. The piece explores the invisible space in which we connect: the sonic. Artistic, activist, dadaistic, musical and other sonic collectives can be heard throughout this piece forming a massive community of resonance and resistance. The piece consists of fragments of interviews, works, music, field recordings and other hard-to-categorize audio material that could be heard earlier on Trashkot by Verena Barié, , Gerri Jäger, Jeanne-Marie Knops, Andreas Malm, numina_gneisspecker, Varkenshond, Stijn Verhoeff, and different pieces from the radio makers themselves. The contributions by Peter Cusack, Davide Tidoni and Salomé Voegelin are fragments from the larger sonic essay RADICAL MURMUR by Trashlinie, which was published in Collateral.
Trashkot is a bi-weekly radio program by Jo Caimo and Sjoerd Leijten on Radio Centraal in Antwerp. A rancid tissue of sounds, conversations and garbage forms a shaky bridge between music and politics.
Every two weeks on Sunday from 3 pm to 4.30 pm. Radio Centraal broadcasts in and around Antwerp on 106.7 FM. Outside of Antwerp you can listen via tShhe stream: http://streaming.radiocentraal.org/
All archived episodes can be found down here
The episode consists of an excerpt from the bootleg recording of Shentov, Simitchiev, Lukanov’s performance at the Museum Of Contemporary Art Skopje from July 2022. This was the second performance of the drone trio outside of their native Bulgaria (the first one was a day earlier at the Macedonian radio Kanal 103). The performance took place on the museum patio, with parts of Skopje and the sun setting behind the mountains.
It was part of the Amek Collective & Kontingent Records label showcase organized by KRIK – festival of critical culture in Skopje.
The program documents the first ever performance of the first Inclusive City Choir, founded by Trisomie 21 – Association for Support of People with Down Syndrome and created in collaboration and mentorship of the Kolektiv Veternica. It took place in Skopje’s City Walls residential area, on 22.10.2021.
Mario, Stefan, Ena, Matej, Filip, Ilina, Oli, Niki, Beti, Dare and Kosta are performing famous Macedonian folk and pop songs.
At one point a neighbor yells from a balcony: “Stop it, you are disturbing! Go to the National TV to do this.”
Hopefully, one day, they will.
Recorded and edited by Gjorgji Janevski
Photo by Jelena Belikj