Author: rreis

From RIIST – Future Radio Zero

(the nera maling list as the directions for the treasure chest…)

From 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?”