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trans beskid radio volume iii: travels in retrotopia

by AKASHIC RECORDS

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PadraigC
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PadraigC This reminds me of Radio Luxembourg and BBC World Service might have sounded like decades ago.
A very well edited and produced album.
The extensive release notes deserve proper (and further) reading... Favorite track: vagueness, wave-functions.
kvbence
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ivopetrov
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Universal Default
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John El-Manahi
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Rudy Carrera
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rocslocs2
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1.
ether frolics 09:22
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2.
patrins, sequins, hertz & mega 08:02
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3.
vagueness, wave-functions 11:29
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4.
images plucked from the air 09:39
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5.
cyto-skull-duggery 08:28
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about

My title is inspired by a hybrid theory of consciousness, derived from Umberto Eco's "Travels in the Hyper-reality" and Zygmunt Bauman's "Retrotopia". I am situated somewhere in the middle, scratching my head, coming up with terms and modes of address, grappling with the utopia of the open work where I improvise, using contemporary radio signals as material for soundscapes-- and Bauman's sense of a liquid culture of modernity where one has to embrace the slippery or go with the flow or get nowhere at all, maybe all three.

Wiley writes about Zygmunt Bauman.

"The emergence of retrotopia is interwoven with the deepening gulf between power and politics that is a defining feature of our contemporary liquid-modern world—the gulf between the ability to get things done and the capability of deciding what things need to be done, a capability once vested with the territorially sovereign state. This deepening gulf has rendered nation-states unable to deliver on their promises, giving rise to a widespread disenchantment with the idea that the future will improve the human condition and a mistrust in the ability of nation-states to make this happen. True to the utopian spirit, retrotopia derives its stimulus from the urge to rectify the failings of the present human condition—though now by resurrecting the failed and forgotten potentials of the past. Imagined aspects of the past, genuine or putative, serve as the main landmarks today in drawing the road-map to a better world."

While I have not personally lost confidence that an alternative to current society is possible, although I am often troubled by developments or the lack thereof, my work with radiophonography continues to be a meditation on central themes of the border, language, transcendence, translation, contamination, mixed and mixing signals and mu -- thus standing more into the positive side of research and humble optimism or at minimum the work represents my curiosity and sincerity of enjoyment of this noise and bearing testament to the creativity it inspires for quite a few decades, allowing me in some measure to commune with the ancestors, being remix of this strange flux of nomad signifiers.

As the previous volumes realeased by Antenna Non Grata and Mahorka, all the captures of various radios transmissions were made last summer on the border between Poland and Czech Republic, using television antennae, makeshift long wires, improvised loops and the laptop as a kind of repeater and live processing station. Two more volumes are forthcoming, inshallah.

-- Jeff Gburek, May 7, 2021

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released May 7, 2021

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AKASHIC RECORDS Poland

Guitarist, composer, sound designer, field recordist, shortwave radio poet, blending electro-acoustic, electronica, spectral comp., cracked circuits, sounding organic objects with an ear towards earth voices. Studied Javanese and Balinese gamelan and theories of Partch and Xenakis. Working with dance/theater/butoh co. Djalma Primordial Science. More than 400 concerts throughout Europe since 2005. ... more

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