Air On A Radio Frequency Interference String

Running Time: 4:33

Released On: "Electromagnetic Spectrum" - Various Artists (15 tracks)

Label: Institute For Alien Research

Release Date: 20th March 2020

Format: Download

Buy Link: Bandcamp

Another musique concrète challenge from Shaun Robert's IFAR label, and we relished every one of them. Although the compilation this track appeared on was called Electromagnetic Spectrum, the brief we responded to was analogue radio, so that was the part of it we focused on. Skit scratched his head, I gather the digital revolution had come much sooner on his side of the dimensional divide, but in my world, listening to the wireless was more or less something I grew up with. I remember laying in bed late at night as a young teenager, listening to Radio Luxembourg via a small white earplug attached to a battery powered transistor radio. Occasionally, it would 'slip' off of the station, and when you'd try to tune it back on again (in the dark), you'd end up with background static and distorted clips of all sorts of strange and wonderful stations, long since consigned to the annals of history.

It was memories like that which inspired the track Acoustatic on the first real Magic Moments At Twilight Time demo, W20 Advance Guard, way back in 1986, a track which I don't think had seen the light of day since it's last release as part of Willy The Oak Tree's 20th Birthday Party And Other Archive Magic (MMATT 21/22), some 32 years earlier. The intention of the original was as an air for acoustic guitar and radio that would not hold its tuning, of which there were two attempts during that very first MMATT session on Saturday 25th October 1986. Ah, but now I had the tools of digital technology and Skit watching over my shoulder, pretending his spilling hot coffee down my neck when I didn't get something quite right was an accident. It was a strange experience, effectively duetting with yourself from 34 years in the past, but I always liked this piece and I'm happy to have a version of it available again in my current life.0

Back in the day - photos from that original 'W20 Session' on Saturday 25th October 1986, plus the totally handmade first ever MMATT demo!

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