Winter’s debut album, Hollow, forthcoming in September 2018, explores themes of beauty and death, mysticism and myth, loss and letting go—and the space that opens after a release, which allows something new to be born. Her lodestar during the writing process was a line from the poem “Sunday Morning” by Wallace Stevens: “Death is the mother of beauty; hence from her, alone, shall come fulfilment to our dreams and our desires.”

Hollow Alt Mixes

Inside the social club is a secret club of half-heard confessions, bird noise, glitch-mirrors, electric vines, and drones that float and spiral.

Friday-night field recording from the women's/femmes' room of the Orange County Social Club in Carrboro, NC, augmented by electronics and dreams.

More on this 499th weekly Disquiet Junto project — Out of the Landscape (The Assignment: Record a piece of music in which a sound emerges from a field recording) — at: https://disquiet.com/0499/

More on the Disquiet Junto at: https://disquiet.com/junto/

Subscribe to project announcements here: https://tinyletter.com/disquiet-junto/

Project discussion takes place on llllllll.co: https://llllllll.co/t/disquiet-junto-project-0499-out-of-a-landscape/

There’s also a Disquiet Junto Slack. Send your email address to twitter.com/disquiet for Slack inclusion.

Major thanks to the work on Golden Gate Bridge music by Mahlen Morris (@StochasticTelegraph) and Nate Mercereau in inspiring this project’s approach.

The Secret Club In The Social Club © 2021 by Angela Winter is licensed under Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International

The Secret Club In The Social Club [disquiet0499]

Part of the SHORTWAVE TRANSMISSIONS project, by Cities and Memory, Oxford, UK: "We've teamed up with our friends at the Shortwave Radio Archive to present more than 120 incredible recordings covering eight decades of the history of radio – all remixed and reimagined by artists all over the world."

EXPLORE THE FULL PROJECT:
https://citiesandmemory.com/shortwave/

ORIGINAL RECORDING DETAILS:

ZD8VR Volcano Radio 
1602 AM Closedown 5 May 1979/AFRTS Ascension Island Sign Off
Gary Deacon recorded [this audio]. It has end of jazz show, sign off announcement, station ID, and incomplete GSTQ by local gender-neutral band.
Receiver and antenna: 1950's Siera domestic valve receiver and 20 metre longwire antenna.

SHORTWAVE TRANSMISSIONS REMIX DETAILS:

Volcano Radio. Ascension Island. The exotic names drew my attention, and Ascension Island especially captured my imagination, as I’d never heard of any such place. I learned that it’s an isolated volcanic island located in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, about halfway between Brazil and Angola. The British used it as a staging ground during the Falklands War; now it hosts a Royal Air Force station, a NASA tracking station, and what’s sometimes called “the worst golf course in the world.” 

Volcano Radio began broadcasting in 1958 under the Ascension callsign, ZD8VR, Volcano Radio. Though it was a British station, it was funded for many years by the U.S. Armed Forces Radio Service, enabling it to run around the clock, at least for a time.

On May 5, 1979, Gary Deacon, a shortwave enthusiast and DXer in Capetown, South Africa, captured this audio recording of Volcano Radio’s broadcast. He wrote on his Cape DX blog: “It was a surprise to receive the 500 watt station with a remarkable peak from across the South Atlantic, over 4 430 km / 2 754 miles away!”

As I listened to Gary’s vintage, staticky recording, I was drawn first to the British radio host’s sign-off announcement, followed by the recording of “God Save The Queen” that stops mid-stream. After all the static, the sudden silence was blissful. I decided to preserve the end of the original audio in my mix. I also decided to flow a brief, heavily processed field recording of molten lava under “God Save The Queen,” because, why not? It’s Volcano Radio!

I listened more deeply to the original recording and became fascinated with the jazz show host’s charismatic wrap-up, when he says, “Then there’s the news that the clock on the wall is beginning to strike its magical hour, when all good things must come to an end.” I lifted the phrase “when all good things must come to an end” and seeded it through my mix, processing and transforming it in different ways. 

The more I worked with the original audio material, the more it suggested an experimental, noise-music treatment for this remix. I went with it.

Volcano Radio stopped transmitting in 2009. All good things must come to an end.

CREDITS:

Original shortwave transmission recording by Gary Deacon.

Field recording of molten lava by ATG142 on Freesound.org (CC0 license).

Synth recordings, production, and mixing by Angela Winter.


THANKS TO:

Stuart Fowkes, Cities and Memory founder, for organizing and hosting the Shortwaves Transmission project, https://citiesandmemory.com/shortwave/.

Gary Deacon, https://capedx.blogspot.com/, for his original audio recording, historical notes, generosity, and enthusiasm. http://capedx.blogspot.com/2009/11/ascension-is-zd8vr-volcano-radio-1602.html

Sarah Boucher and the Ascension Island Heritage Society for historical notes on Volcano Radio and the original audio recording.

Volcano Radio: All Good Things Must Come to an End

Alt mix of a song from my debut album HOLLOW, which drops on September 20. 

THE LOVERS

Once, so long ago,
We were clothed in time
Life began with death
A swollen fruit between us as a bind
 
A snake slithered through the brush
In undulating waves
Your skin shivered in the hush
The choice before us one already made
 
Created from the dust of stars
Eternity was nearly ours
We loved, and for a time,
The whole world was alive
Is alive
The whole world is alive
Is alive
 
One divides in two
And suffering begins
What’s lost can’t be reduced
And freedom gained is worth the price of truth
 
Now we both should know
The folly in the fall
And fools surrender most
Emerging from the love that binds us all

Created from the dust of stars
Eternity was nearly ours
We loved, and for a time,
The whole world was alive
Is alive
The whole world is alive
Is alive

Hollow

The Lovers - Alt Mix 1

Alt mix of a song from my debut album HOLLOW.

DREAMBODY

What rests on the shore cerulean bright
Sleeps through the day and sings through the night
Elephantine, yet translucent and light?
It’s waiting

Old as the sea, its lover the moon
Breathing in water, it breathes out the tune
that you dance to each night, yet forget all too soon
It’s waiting

The Dreambody’s waiting
It’s always been waiting
The Dreambody waits at the ocean

You may think all is lost 
You may think you’re alone
You may wander a land going farther from home
No matter the distance, wherever you roam
It’s waiting

The Dreambody’s waiting
It’s always been waiting
The Dreambody waits at the ocean

A storm’s drawing close; now’s the time to be brave
You’re not alone; your life it can save
Gathering strength with every wave
It’s waiting

Climb into your vessel and set out to sea
Sometimes you’ll be lost, but you’ll always be free
It’s never abandoned you, listen to me
It’s waiting

The Dreambody’s waiting
It’s always been waiting
The Dreambody waits at the ocean

Dreambody - Alt Mix 1

The venerable Gayatri mantra is a meditation on spiritual light. It is considered to be the essence of all mantras; its purpose is to uplift human consciousness. 

The base of “Gayatri” is a field recording of me chanting 108 repetitions of this mantra during a dawn chorus outside my home in Carrboro, North Carolina. I transformed this field recording into an ambient soundscape suitable for playing during quiet work, meditation, yoga, bodywork, cloud-watching, daydreaming, stargazing, gardening, contemplation, and/or slipping into other worlds. 

Each time you play “Gayatri,” you are helping uplift all of human consciousness. 

We need this urgently and now. Please listen often and share it with your communities. I would be so grateful.

Wishing you all a peaceful, reflective holiday season.

With love and gratitude,
Angela

Gayatri

Angela Winter creates experimental, ritual, and ambient music for thresholds, where synths, keys, and strings meet otherworldly vocals, shimmering drones, and overtones. Her music has been described as “beautifully haunting” (Bandcamp Daily), “stunning” (Foxy Digitalis), and “spellbinding” (Lost and Found Sounds). Bandcamp featured her albums Sonic Essences and lightness as New & Notable releases, and her music has appeared on radio shows from Asheville to Australia and in audio compilations from Washington, DC, to Oxford, UK. She has performed at Carnegie Hall, and in addition to her own shows and festival performances, she has opened for Norman Westberg (Swans) and John Cale (The Velvet Underground).

Sonic Family and Genres

Experimental :: Ambient :: Electronic :: Trance :: Psychedelic :: Mystical :: Musique Concrète :: Soundtrack :: Acid Pastoral :: Noise

Thelonius Monk, Meredith Monk, Kate Bush, Thom Yorke, Mark Linkous (Sparklehorse), Radiohead, Portishead, John Cage, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Erik Satie, Maurice Ravel, Éliane Radigue, Ella Fitzgerald, Bjork, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Linda Perhacs, nature music, field recordings, birds

Angela Winter

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