How can you use the art of sound to make painful memory joyful, without negating the importance of painful experience? What is myth? What is awe? How can you honor, yet document the unknown? Where do the personal, cultural, emotional politics collide in a rendering of sonicity? What does it mean to endure? 

These are questions that currently fascinate me.  My current work is focused on collaging experiential process through soundscape exploration, based on unique embodied experiences.  

Just before the world shutdown in 2019 I voyaged on an English cargo ship from the United Kingdom to North America. I wanted to know…to embody the motion, movements of not only a history but of a wonder around sounds, memory, what we carry, what we leave behind whether by choice or force.

I carried with me a small “roberts radio”, that refused to work of course, b/c there was no signal. So I kept an audio diary and from that, a series of field recordings, and footage I made during this time,  I present to you a radio collage, of a life changing moment for me not only as an artist, but as a person, entitled “Chasing Hopes on the Star Atlantic…” 

Biography

Matana Roberts is an internationally celebrated composer, performer, band leader, saxophonist, sound experimentalist, and mixed-media practitioner. 

Working across many contexts and mediums, including improvisation, music composition, visual art, dance, poetry, and theatre, Roberts is perhaps best known for their acclaimed Coin Coin project – a multi-chapter work of ‘panoramic sound quilting’ mixed media performance work, that aims to expose the mystical roots and intuitive traditions of American creative expression, while maintaining a deep and substantive engagement with narrative, history, community and political expression within sonic structures.

“Chasing Hopes on the Star Atlantic…” is a co-commission between Kunst zum Hören ORF Ö1 and Radiophrenia.

https://www.matanaroberts.com/

Matana Roberts - Chasing Hopes on the Star Atlantic

‘I hear her call: Salome…? Danu…? Come ah-come…’ is a surreal folkloristic sonic tale or a journey through memories encountered in a fever dream. Scenic echoes intimately evolve, looped until they burst into strange atmospheres and rhythms. We meet a hopelessly entangled voice, haunted and lost. Bewildered by fragmented distortions she attempts to unpick a series of flickering scenes. Delving into the emotional world of both adult and child. Something significant that happened. Imprinted in memory. Amorphous and vague. A lament. The forest is crying against a blurred background. A ritual unfolds, lifts a spell of silence. Hidden behind the noise she remains indistinct. Vibrant matters pulsating. A gatekeeper of invisible worlds. An empty corridor filled with footsteps. She flees into the river. A ghostly figure. A cry. A flower left on the kitchen table. A chant.

She leads us through chaotic waters of electro acoustic instrumentation, field recordings, noise, singing, spoken narration, decaying tape loops, and a rich tapestry of both analogue and digital experimental recording processes. Mocking, hiding, guiding, waking, haunting, lost, mourning, grieving, she runs through rhythmic glimpses, moving between nuances of lightness and downfall.

Biography

Mondlane is the solo moniker of sound artist Lisa Fabian, also in the Glasgow trio NEY. As Mondlane, she layers field recordings with processed vocals and manipulated fragments and electroacoustic instrumentation. She draws from a growing library of intimate recordings, using her narrative rich samples as instruments in improvised performances.

Interested in the personal and collective experience and unconscious, she explores the fragmentation and reassembly of narrative. Often touching on themes of intimacy, temporality, otherworldliness, and relationships that materialise in-between bodies and memories, as well as archival or collected material.

Most recent work was shown at: The Old Church Stoke Newington (London), Cafe Oto (London), The Old Hairdressers (Glasgow), EXIT (Glasgow), 90mil (Berlin), Globe Gallery (Berlin), The House of Bell Street (Glasgow), The Briggait (Glasgow), Hoxton 253 (London), Keep in touch Gallery (Seoul), CCA – Centre of Contemporary Arts (Glasgow) amongst others. Recent residencies include CCA Creative Lab Glasgow (2023), Countdown Grabowsee Berlin (2024), Countdown Grabowsee Berlin (2023).

Mondlane - “I hear her call: Salome…? Danu…? Come ah-come…”

As a child I travelled the world on BCL radio and was fascinated by the music and languages of distant countries with fading phenomena.

Once, while checking the shortwave band, a ‘pheeew’ noise passed by. 

The frequency range was very wide,and the overall frequency was heard to rise in a continuous sequence of changes.

What was that sound?

Jamming 2025 is an attempt to recreate that experience from memory.

Biography:

Phew is a musician based in Tokyo, Japan. While fronting Aunt Sally, one of Osaka’s earliest punk groups, Phew played a critical role in developing Japan’s underground music scene. Phew’s oeuvre spans a vast array of experimental sounds: from no-wavey synth-hymns; to poppy, shoegazing, industrial undertones; to eerie incandescent drones. Since the 1970s, Phew’s dynamic, compelling voice and her commitment to unfettered experimentation has been critical in shaping the sound of avant-garde music both in Japan and internationally.

https://phewjapan.bandcamp.com

Phew - Jamming 2025

Ute Wassermann interweaves her voice with field recordings of birds, insects, frogs – of creatures that move across the boundaries between air, water and earth and finds new and different resonance places far away from their original environment. Fragile, seemingly natural sounds, such as the buzzing of bees under water, can be transformed into technoid drones. Snippets of soundscapes ghost through objects.  Does the singer retain her identity or does she become the ‘other’? The boundary between self and environment becomes fluid, so that the latter itself becomes an illusion in favour of a more complex reality. The binaries of animal and human, object and human, nature and technology are turned upside down in favour of interwoven relationships based on reciprocity.

Ute Wassermann: voice, bird whistles
Felix Blume: field recordings 

Biography

Ute Wassermann is one of the outstanding contemporary vocal artists of our time. She combines composition, improvisation and performance art to create her own form of Gesamtkunst, in which environmentally relevant themes play an essential role. At the centre of her research is the continuous and uncompromising exploration of her voice. Ute Wassermann’s singing goes far beyond the human voice and manifests itself in multidimensional sculptural sounds that oscillate between electronic, animal, inorganic and human qualities. She takes this to the extreme by creating a visceral sound space through the use of different types of microphones. In addition, she expands and alienates her voice through the use of bird whistles, lo-fi electronics, resonators, field recordings and objects.

She has been touring the world as an improviser and performer of contemporary music for many years. In the last ten years, she has increasingly realised audiovisual performances, installations and compositions for soloists and ensembles.

“Imaginary Habitats” is a co-commission between Goethe-Institut Glasgow and Radiophrenia. We are grateful for their support.

Photo credits: Cristina Marx/Photomusix

https://utewassermann.com

Ute Wassermann - Imaginary Habitat



Year of the Dragon. A mother draws a circle. Spins round. Pins everything but the tail on the donkey. She wants to know how the dragon makes fire, gets inside it. On the inside things slow.

Written in the Year of the Dragon, Zara Joan Miller’s long poem traces fire across a year. The figure of Saint Margaret, who freed herself from the belly of a dragon, is relocated in living voices that challenge structures of oppression today. A year of feeding fire, of dousing and soft loving. A mother waits in disguise by the fire exit.

Biography

Zara Joan Miller is an artist working across poetry, performance and film. Her work seeks to unravel boundaries between human and non-human nature, often playing with movement and sound as a way of reimagining a body’s rhythm. Zara is the author of poetry collection BLUE MONDAY (JOAN Publishing, 2022), which was also released as a duo LP with cellist Ute Kanngießer (Reading Group 2023). Her work has recently been presented at Barbican Centre, Muse Gallery, Horse Hospital, Cafe OTO (London), In Vitro (Brussels), Default

https://zarajoanmiller.com

Year of the Dragon is co-commissioned by Radiophrenia, TACO! and blurt. blurt is an experimental platform supporting artists to develop text-based works for live reading and performance, and synchronous live-to-air broadcast on rtm.fm. In this testing-site for testing text, four artists and artist-groups consider radio broadcast as an expanded form of publishing. This co-commission is supported by the Outlands Network Exchange programme.

https://taco.org.uk/About-Us
https://outlands.network/


Zara Joan Miller - Year of the Dragon

Tape letters between two friends, one living in a blanket fort, the other in a house of paper, and both deeming each other’s homes unsound, can’t seem to agree on who should visit the other. So instead, one of them builds a house they can meet in, out of the safest material: Noise.

Biography

Yara is a musician and puppeteer based in Beirut, Lebanon. She incorporates accordion, metallophone and electronics in her live performances. In addition to her musical work, she has participated in exhibitions where she featured sound and video installations including ‘Sonatina for 19 Music Boxes’ (interactive sound installation), ’The Cut-Throat Finch Preludes’ (tape loop installation), ‘I Liked it Better When We Lived on See-Saw Hill’ (video installation) and ‘Lapses’ (interactive sound installation). Last year she released  ‘Mr. Samuel’s Teatime Stories for Good Kids and Confused Adults’ – A puppet film in four parts.

https://yaraasmar.com/

https://yaraasmar.bandcamp.com/album/stuttering-music

@microwave.blues

Yara Asmar - I am building a house

“Administrative Embrace” grants unprecedented access to the inner workings and concealed logic of the enigmatic Office for Joint Administrative Intelligence. This transmission crosses rustbelt landscapes, pedestrian tunnels, flyovers, debris fields, and timelines, charting states of decline, delirium, immortality, and heroic obedience. Listeners are invited into the vast and impressive O.J.A.I. world headquarters. Through spoken word, modular sounds, architectural and bureaucratic fictions, lists, timelines, and ambient musical accompaniment, “Administrative Embrace” offers an hour-long exploration into institutional conjuring, information overload, camaraderie, and magic.

Produced by O.J.A.I. in 2024/25 for Radiophrenia Glasgow

Text and voice by Gary Farrelly
Sound and mix by Chris Dreier
Piano by Tim Löhd

Biography

Office for Joint Administrative Intelligence (O.J.A.I.) is the collaborative practice of artists Chris Dreier and Gary Farrelly based in Brussels and Berlin. The work is fuelled by recurring fascinations with architecture, infrastructure, finance, esoteric practices and institutional power manifesting in postal correspondence, installations, sound, performance and walks as well as limited vinyl editions and publications. The work has been presented at Hugh Lane Gallery (Dublin), Damien & the Love Guru (Brussels), Centre Wallonie-Bruxelles (Paris), Marres House for Contemporary Culture (Maastricht), De Garage (Mechelen) and Contemporary Art Center (Cincinnati, US), among many others.

O.J.A.I. produces a monthly music radio show for Dublin Digital Radio and for Cashmere Radio Berlin.

https://jointintelligence.org/    
@jointintelligence

OJAI -ADMINISTRATIVE EMBRACE

EXTRA ALCHEMY live mix from the Institute of Contemporary Art & Radio Coyote takeover of Central On Air in Cambridge, MA.
This mix is the fourth in the series that I started fifteen years ago to showcase music from the murk that wasn’t created for a horror/thriller film score, but possesses the same acousmatic qualities.
The EA4 set is comprised of tracks from my vinyl collection and digital library accompanied by live sound design from my Norns-n-TX-6. As per usual with EXTRA ALCHEMY, witched-out radiophonics, pagan pop, drone zone and haunted sound collages.

Pocketknife Presents: EXTRA ALCHEMY 4 Live on Central On Air for ICA / Radio Coyote Takeover

For the 4th episode of the podcast series "I've Got An Idea For A Podcast", the podcast-within-the-podcast was a mock seance podcast which played into the tropes of camp horror & seance within the media. For this, I developed some synth music/ambience/sounds which would serve as additional audio texture during the sections where the hosts would be guessing the name of the individual who would proceed to 'possess' one or the other. 

The 3 ominous drones/stings were used when the possession began or finished, with the final drone/ambience used when the hosts were guessing the celebrity spirit who was in the room.

Instruments used:
Arturia:
CP-70 V
Emulator-II V
Solina V

Artwork by Ashley Ashton

I've Got An Idea For A Podcast - Episode 4: Seance and Seanceability Synthesiser work

New Album due for release on Castles in Space Feb 27th 2026. 
Title: Counting to Ten Then Back Again
Artist: Keith Seatman
Format: LP / Download
Release date, Feb 27th  2026
Catalogue Number: CiS 179
Distributor: Cargo
Genre: Electronic, Leftfield, 
Abstract, Psychedelic

I remember when at school on the last day of term, all the class would bring games in to play, but it always seemed that no one really knew the rules or could fathom out how to play some of them. However, a lot of the games had interesting artwork and fantastic layouts with all sorts of cards and paraphernalia, which I really enjoyed. Around the same time I received a magic set for Christmas. The packaging, images, type, colours on the box and instructions were wonderful. I would entertain members of the family over the festive period with my conjuring skills. My family would humour me by clapping at the end of every really obvious trick and then
make excuses to leave the room.

Counting to ten Then Back Again Excerpts

Radiophrenia is a temporary art radio station – an exploration into current trends in sound and transmission arts. Broadcasting live from Glasgow’s Centre for Contemporary Arts, the station aims to promote radio as an art form, encouraging challenging and radical new approaches to the medium. The broadcast schedule will include live shows, pre-recorded features and a series of ‘live-to-air’performances. The majority of the programme will be made up from selections submitted to an international open call for sound and radio works.

Broadcasting across Glasgow on 87.9fm, and online at www.radiophrenia.scot 

Supported by Creative Scotland.

Radio Presenter & Producer. Fan of electronic music and synthesisers.

Pocketknife began throwing parties as a teenager in rural Iowa when he befriended DJ Wolf (an original 70s disco and deep house jock who rocked it with Lil' Louis in Chicago). He then honed his craft with Theo Parrish (Sound Signature) while the two were in art school together.  Production was inevitable, as Pocketknife started to make tracks while splitting time between Detroit and Switzerland.  Now based in Cambridge, MA via Brooklyn, he continues to develop his diverse sound, remixing, DJing and producing with an open ear for a variety of labels and his own imprint, Wilde Calm.  

DJ Bookings and Remixing Inquiries: pocketknifejams@gmail.com

Musical Oddness & Wistful Tootling, Southsea and always slightly lost. Keith’s 2024 release a skip and a song to see us along was Number 14 in Electronic Sounds Albums of 2024 and also included on Stuart Maconie's Freak Zone (6 Music) Best of 2024 show

A Skip and a Song to See Us Along is an overall entertaining listen. The different atmospheres that get depicted are all colorful enough to make this record a short and sweet trip into some kind of psychedelic kids show, though it’s one of those trips that may make you a bit fidgety if you’re not quite feeling it.
Benci Igloo Magazine August 2024 

Recalling the abstract experiments of Basil Kirchin, back-to-the-nursery psychedelic nightmares that were recurring scenarios on The Prisoner and The Avengers. A parping, marching melody that could’ve come from The Residents. This 16-minute EP is a perfect introduction to Seatman’s evocative, unsettling world. 
Ben Graham Shindig Magazine (July 2023)

"Disjointed Oddities Vol: 2 follows on from 2018's Disjointed Oddities and Other Such things, this is by the great Keith Seatman. Over the last 13 years has released 7 solo albums, all of them unique and interesting." 
Stuart Maconie, Freak Zone BBC 6 Music (June 2023)

An album steeped in sweet shop mysticism of a stranger and gentler England. Its Syd Barrett, Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, Radiophonic workshop and even Tommy Cooper and the remnants of Music hall.
Its barely February but he might have made the album of the year.
Bob Fisher (Electronic Sound, Feb 2020)

Keith Seatman's science fiction landscapes explode with meekness that is undiscriminating as it is enthusiastic. Seatman is a talented sound 
designer, and it shines on his instrumentals.
Wire Magazine 383 (Jan 2016)

Spellbinding, Captivating, Evocative Radiophonic keyboard compositions and electronic folk. brilliant.
Carl Griffin (Electronic Sound Magazine Dec 2015)

His latest is an utterly glorious selection of filmic folk and ghostly electronica that is utterly mesmerising from first to last. 
Wyrd Britain (Nov 2015)

"Seatman is a kindred spirit, and this is his most evocative and personal sounding work to date." 
Jim Jupp, (Ghost Box, 2013)

New tracks tagged #Radiophonic