From RIIST – Future Radio Zero
by Cronica (the folks who did this)
“Essays on Radio” aims to comment on the sound medium, on the technology and the culture of radio.
In the midst of media saturation, radio can easily end by being an overlooked medium, not only due to its lower visibility compared to most mainstream media but mostly because it is an un-visual medium. It is also one of the longer standing and of the oldest electronic media that is still alive, so the novelty factor is not a help.
Radio was the first broadcast medium, as well as the first that was sound-specific and intangible. Historically, radio was the primary responsible for an awareness of sound that went beyond the strict scope of music.
Radio is a saturated live medium, where much happens simultaneously.
Having little or no control about the sources and the interferences during broadcast and reception turns radio into a medium where we can easily and objectively experience noise. Therefore, it was probably through radio that many first heard white noise. It was probably with a radio receiver that many first modulated noise as it was probably through radio that we experienced randomness along with the lack of control and indeterminacy.
This theme was intended to provide the artists with a starting point to approach the work. Unlike we did in the previous compilation, there would be no audio sources provided to the artists beforehand. In this release, what we were looking for were not exercises on composing from shaping any given sound matter but rather on relating the musical pieces to this particular context: Radio.
As a further way to coherently organize the CD, we asked all the artists to produce the pieces with a fixed duration. This symbolic length allowed us to fit work from some of the artists we released so far and a few selected guests and it also served as a strong structure binding all the compositions together. Given the fact that we are closing the 2nd year of Crónica releases, we proposed that all tracks should have the fixed duration of 2 minutes, exactly.
Therefore the sub-title: Can I have two minutes of your time?”