SHORTWAVE TRANSMISSIONS: A SONIC CELEBRATION OF RADIO
If you’re like me, you probably have a fascination with shortwave radio. There’s something magical about tuning into distant voices and sounds from around the world, sometimes clear and crisp, sometimes distorted and fading. Shortwave radio captures vital moments in world history as well as the thrill of pirate radio, clandestine radio stations, secretive number stations, military and spy radio.
That’s why I was excited to contribute to Shortwave Transmissions, a new project by one of the world’s biggest sound projects Cities and Memory in collaboration with the Shortwave Radio Archive. This project sees more than 120 artists remix and recompose iconic shortwave recordings to create brand new compositions reflecting on and celebrating our relationship with radio.
Cities and Memory is a global, collaborative network of sound recordists and artists based in Oxford, UK. Their aim is to remix the world, one sound at a time. They cover more than 100 countries and territories with 5,000+ sounds and more than 1,000 contributing artists. They have created sound projects on themes such as protest, sacred spaces, lockdown soundscape, prison songs and more.
The Shortwave Radio Archive is an online collection of shortwave radio recordings from around the world. It features broadcasts from various countries, languages and genres. It also includes rare recordings of historical events such as the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Chernobyl disaster and the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Shortwave Transmissions was released on February 13th to mark World Radio Day 2022. The project consists of four albums: Voices Across Borders (featuring speech-based recordings), Signals Across Time (featuring number stations), Sounds Across Worlds (featuring music-based recordings) and Waves Across Oceans (featuring atmospheric recordings).
I hope you enjoy this amazing project as much as I did. Happy listening!