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.

This, the inaugural contribution to the Radia Network from Radio One (Dunedin, New Zealand), offers an impressionistic account of the biannual, and somewhat secretive, experimental music and film festival “Lines of Flight”. Running in Dunedin since 2000, “Lines of Flight” has provided New Zealand improvisational and experimental musicians with an intensive platform for performance and interaction and has organically evolved a space for a much stronger formation of a sound practioners’ community. Although the improv./experimental scene from which the festival grew – recall the musicians associated with the labels Metonymic and Corpus Hermeticum in the 1990s – has changed considerably since the festival’s beginnings, Lines of Flight has become a kind of default constant, a fluid forum, a relatively regular ‘symposium’ for many in that evolving scene.

Radio producers Sally-Ann McIntyre (a.k.a. ‘Radio Cegeste’) and Gilbert May took the opportunity which the 2009 Lines of Flight festival offered to interview a number of the organisers and performers (particularly those who have had a long standing relation to the festival) to obtain their reflections on the history and significance of the biannual event. Combined with an equally partial selection of music, a limited and impressionistic editing process provides a far from comprehensive, yet nevertheless enlightening, introduction not just to the “Lines of Flight” festival, but to a part of a wider New Zealand scene.

[Featuring: Peter Stapleton, Kim Pieters, Peter Porteus, Alex Mackinnon, Bruce Russell, Matt Middleton, Dean Roberts, Rachel Shearer as well as samples from Sleep, Flies Inside the Sun, Birchville Cat Motel, Handful of Dust, Crude, Eye, Rotor Plus, Tillakaratne and Adrian Hall’s Red Carpet. Many thanks to all involved…]