Feature image: The Deep Dark, an installation by Caitlind r.c. Brown & Wayne Garrett. Photo by Caitlind Brown at Nuit Blanche Winnipeg
EARS HAVE EYES // Episode 37
Airing Wednesday, March 12, 2024 at 8 pm MST
on CJSW 90.9 FM, NAISA, & Golden Co-Op Radio
THE SOUND OF HOPE:
edge of darkness, brink of light
ARTISTS:
AnimaeNoctis
Domenico De Simone
Enor D
The Locals Trio
Mark Hanslip
Midnite Gossip
Stephen Roddy
This program is co-hosted by Caitlind r.c. Brown & Wayne Garrett. This episode edited by Caitlind Brown. Thanks to CJSW, Golden Co-Op Radio, and NAISA (especially Kaamil, Claire, and Darren) for supporting this show!
EARS HAVE EYES is a monthly sound art radio program airing on CJSW 90.9 FM in Calgary/Mohkinstsis, Golden Co-op Radio in Golden, BC, and NAISA Radio in South River, Ontario. You can listen to podcasts of previous episodes here.
For many, the last few months have felt hopeless. The cold & dark of winter, groundswell of totalitarianism, and regular seasonal malaise has left us straining to find anything good to hold onto. As Winter creeps towards the Spring, we’ve been seeking The Sound of Hope. Artists, musicians, and sound-based practitioners from around the world were invited to share their own interpretation of this sound, reflecting the place where their optimism resides and flourishes in an ever-expanding ripple of positive possibilities.
As part of today’s show, we invited dear friends to send us a voice memo describing a sound that gives them hope. We’ve sprinkled their messages throughout the program. Thanks to Audrey Lane, Chad, Genevieve, Jennifer, Jim, Joanne, Marnie, Monica, Ramin, Rebecca, and Susan for describing sounds that bring them hope across today’s episode.
Thanks to the participating artists and our friends at CJSW, NAISA, and Golden Co-op Radio!
AnimaeNoctis
AnimaeNoctis is a multimedia duo: Silvia Marcantoni Taddei (1994) & Massimo Sannelli (1973). They have been living and working together since 2019: performance, music, dance, e-publishing, filmmaking, post-porn, photography + modeling. They are based in Novi Sad, Serbia.
Something Is Going To Happen In 90 Seconds is a new piece created specifically for EARS HAVE EYE’s episode, The Sound of Hope. A 3 minutes-long item with an electronic/improvised/jazzy intro that leads into a slow remake of Vivaldi’s Spring: hope is in the very waiting for something that “is going to happen in 90 seconds”.
This piece will be featured in AnimaeNoctis upcoming album Duvan Nar Neoplanta Proleće Power Dance. Find it here.
Domenico De Simone
Domenico De Simone is a Professor of Electroacoustic Composition at the “Umberto Giordano” Music Conservatory of Foggia, Italy. He enhanced his knowledge under the guidance of Ennio Morricone, Franco Donatoni, Salvatore Sciarrino, Azio Corghi, Giorgio Nottoli, Riccardo Bianchini. His compositions have been performed in more than one hundred concerts in Italy and abroad (China, Latvia, Canada, Chile, Argentina, Romania, Malta, USA, Ireland, UK, Spain, Austria, Brazil, France, Ecuador, Australia, Poland, Germany, South Korea, Portugal, Peru, Thailand, Switzerland, etc).
About PEACE WINDS:
“The WIND knows no BORDERS, it cannot BE STOPPED.
PEACE WIND is born from the sound of a WIND, the same WIND that caressed my face as a child, when my SOUL was still INNOCENT, when my SOUL didn’t yet know to BE.
I entrusted MUSIC with the task of making the WIND SPEAK—or rather, making it SING words of PEACE, but in an UNHEARD OF and INAUDIBLE language, intelligible only to the most intimate and profound part of our BEING, thus hoping that our SOUL, finally FREE, can let itself be moved and transported to an IDEAL WORLD, where the condition of NORMALITY is PEACE, where the only IMAGINABLE WAR is the one for PEACE.
PEACE does not SHOUT.
PEACE WIND: WIND of PEACE, PEACE in the WIND.“
Enor D
Enor D, spelled reversely as Drone, is a sound artist interested in drone and ambient.
About Pandora’s Unbox:
“The place where I live has been going through challenging times in recent years. Feeling uncertain about the future, some of my closest friends and relatives have chosen to leave—leaving the place where they grew up, leaving the people they love, for distant shores far away from their cherished roots.
At a farewell gig I recently attended as part of the audience, my friend, a guitarist in the band, performed a cover of a Cantonese pop song called The Best is Yet to Come before he permanently left this place. The hook lines of the song went like this: “To hug someone, to kiss someone, the best is YET to come.” Moved by the performance and the lyrics, I was reminded of the story of Pandora’s Box: although many evils and catastrophes were released when Pandora opened the mysterious box, HOPE remained. It is indeed HOPE that allows us to keep moving forward. With this thought in mind, I revisited one of my harsh noise/drone works in progress, adding a bittersweet, soothing synth sound at the end of the track to symbolize HOPE. And thus, the first track of this album, Pandora’s Unbox, was unboxed.”
The Locals Trio
Born from the explosive meeting of three unique musical sensibilities, The Locals Trio is an invitation to travel, to discover multiple horizons that coexist in harmony and are enriched through their diversity.
The Locals Trio presents itself as an experimental jazz improvisation project that explores the infinite possibilities of sound through spontaneous interaction and shared creativity. The trio, composed of Cristina Italiani, Antonio Aiello and Giuseppe ”Lacinskij ”Schillaci, stands out for a bold and innovative approach to music, where experimentation and expressive freedom are at the center of the creative process. The Locals Trio’s first recording is a work of experimental improvisation that captures the essence of their music: an ever-evolving flow of sounds, where melody, harmony and rhythm come together in a unique and engaging listening experience. The album is a sonic journey that invites the listener to abandon themselves to the unpredictability of the music, letting themselves be carried away by the emotions and suggestions that emerge from the interaction between the three musicians.
The Locals Trio presents itself as an innovative and courageous musical reality, capable of surprising and fascinating the public with its authentic and original music. Their sonic research is an invitation to active and conscious listening, an exploration of the infinite possibilities of sound that is renewed with each performance, making each concert a unique and unrepeatable event.
About Felicità 1:
“From the first sigh at the beginning you can feel an introspective and very intimate journey, a search for happiness, ,an invitation to let it flow , which passes through moments of darkness and pain that are always very sensual and which will explode with energy and hope in a bright future of …. FELICITA”
Mark Hanslip
Mark Hanslip is an improvising saxophonist and technologist based in the north west of England whose solo work augments his acoustic sound with a mix of off-the-shelf hardware, hand-written software and bespoke AI models, a hybrid setup that allows him to build frameworks for experimentation with sound. This work reflects his love of improvised, jazz, ambient and experimental musics, a long-standing commitment to playing saxophone, and an obsession with the possibilities offered by new technologies sparked by his PhD studies at the University of York which he completed in 2024. Over his 20+ year playing career Mark has performed and recorded with many great improvising musicians, including Nate Wooley, Elliot Sharp, Evan Parker, Paul Dunmall, Mark Sanders, Tony Bianco, Paul Hession, Javier Carmona, Emil Karlsen, Federico Reuben, Andrew Cheetham, Dominic Lash, Olie Brice and Otto Willberg.
About Flowers:
“Flowers is a structured electroacoustic improvisation for saxophone and electronics. Inspired by the resilience of plants, the piece explores regeneration and growth, and reflects my fascination with the generative possibilities afforded to musicians by using machine learning algorithms in live performance. Passages of improvisation are recorded, analysed and recycled, leading to interactions and effects that are unique to each performance of the piece.“
Midnite Gossip
Midnite Gossip is a cinematic alt-pop duo from Calgary, AB, featuring Nicky Markin and Mickey Valenz. Known for their “pretty but gritty” aesthetic, they blend cinematic soundscapes with trip-hop and alt-pop influences, drawing inspiration from artists like Portishead, Massive Attack, and Phantogram. Their music combines raw, introspective lyrics with infectious beats, creating an immersive experience that resonates universally. With an upcoming debut EP set for 2025, the duo continues to push artistic boundaries, inviting listeners to explore personal growth and transformation through their sound.
Tightrope takes listeners through the discomfort of change, the pain of letting go, and the quiet strength it takes to move forward. Ultimately bracing for flight and choosing to embrace the unknown. Produced and recorded by Midnite Gossip in their home studio, the track blends lo-fi trip hop, ambient textures, orchestral strings, synth bass, and unexpected beats. “The song doesn’t unfold how you’d expect, and that’s intentional, we wanted to keep listeners on their toes, much like navigating real-life challenges.”
Stephen Roddy
Stephen Roddy is a sound artist and researcher based at the Radical Humanities Laboratory. His work explores themes of sound, technology and the body.
Coprus/Mimesis, his upcoming album emerging from a collaboration with AMAE, Pier Giorgio De Pinto and Jean-Luc Nancy, releases in April 2025 on Fiadh Productions.
21, 7 & 3 is a visceral sonic interpretation of the work of Jean-Luc Nancy which lodges itself permanently in the listeners subconscious. It emerged from a collaboration between AMAE, Pier Giorgio De Pinto and Jean Luc Nancy incorporating Nancy’s own recordings of his Fifty Eight indices on the body ‘ a series of short textual compositions exploring the nature of the body produced for the 2008 translation of his 1992 book Corpus. The piece opens slowly with ethereal wisps of voice heralding Nancy’s performance before degraded strings piano and percussion enter into the mix in a. rhythmic cycle. The distorted timbres, rough edges, and small discontinuities in time, frequency and amplitude present in Nancy’s recordings are carried over into the soundworld.
It will release on the album Corpus/Mimesis in April 2025.
Thank you to the artists & listeners!
Special thanks to CJSW.
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