Hello you. It’s Valentines Season once again and time for us all to show our love to some good causes. Here are three that are very close to my heart, and no doubt yours as well. Please consider supporting one or all of them and let’s all do our bit to support grassroots art and culture in these gloomy times.
First off, as regular visitors to this site will be only too aware, our Friends at IKLECTIK lost their venue recently, due to the Old Paradise Yard site being the subject of a greedy land grab by nasty old developers. A small oasis of creativity and wonderment in the heart of London disappeared forever. Or has it?
Isa and Eduard are the lovely people who run IKLECTIK, a truly unique nonprofit creative organisation supporting experimental sound, art and technology. The venue has launched a crowdfunding campaign to support their future, find new premises and plan further invents, details of which can be found here. Please consider supporting this wondrous project so that they can continue their excellent work and return to being the crucial cultural breeding ground that London richly needs right now.
For their part the Castles In Space label have scrambled and are launching a brand new fundraising compilation This Is Not The End. In record time they’ve managed to pull together a fabulous 33 track compilation of new and exclusive music from CiS artists – including the exclusive Howlround track ‘Splattering Penge Version Two’. As label head Colin puts it: ‘I swear, it’s one of the best things I’ve ever been involved in. The quality of the work from everyone involved speaks volumes about the respect in which Isa and Eduard are held from anyone who has ever had an interaction with them or played at their amazing venue’. Order your copy here.
However, time is tight. The crowdfunder closes at the end of this month and it’s an all or nothing deal. If they don’t make the target, all money will be returned and we will have lost something very special. Their future plans include finding a new home and taking the IKLECTIK experience to other venues around the UK. CiS have opened up all tracks on the album so people can listen on the bandcamp, but this album will not be available on streaming platforms. Please give what you can to ensure these excellent people can continue to do their exceptional work – and don’t wait, time is rapidly ticking!
Elsehwhere, the excellent Brachliegen Tapes have unveiled their latest release REQUEST STOP, a 16 track compilation loosely based around the theme of bus travel and its related infrastructure – and featuring another exclusive Howlround track ‘196 is a Joke’, one of our heaviest works for quite some time. All proceeds will be donated to the Autonomous Winter Shelter, a housing network and mutual aid initiative who aim to provide a safe and warm space for people to stay, create, and take care of themselves and others within a community environment. AWS were violently evicted from their home in June 2023 and it is our hope that the money raised through this fundraiser compilation can contribute to the collective’s future activities and solidarity fund in the face of the on-going brutality of austerity and the cost of living crisis in the UK. Direct contributions can be made to the solidarity fund to help AWS sort out basic items like toiletries, sleeping bags, mattresses and other items needed urgently by clicking here.
REQUEST STOP features a mixture of Brachliegen alumni and a number of new arrivals. Contributions to the comp range from audio documentary and sound collage to pounding rhythmic industrial noise and anarcho bus punk live from the depot. Blistering tapework, electro-acoustic experimental folk, warped techno, minimalist compositions, field recordings, deconstructed grimescapes, heavy electronics and demented psychojazz all conspire in solidarity against the dereliction of social care.
Finally, the greatest radio station in the world is holding its annual month-long fundraiser to raise crucial funds and continue its remarkable programme non-profit, ad-free independent broadcasting, 24 hours a day, 365 days of the year. Every day of the year their two extraordinary stations – Resonance FM and Resonance EXTRA – each broadcast 24 hours of original programming, entirely free of commercial influence. Their pioneering, award-winning and ever-evolving schedule of extraordinary broadcasts covers all kinds of topics. Not just music – from ambient to zydeco, grime to improv, folk to feedback – but literature, fine art, theatre, film, video-games, field recordings, climate change, social justice, finance, international development, civil rights, technology, radio-art, and so much more.
Resonance is not just a radio station. It’s by turns a lifeline, a toolkit, a toy, and a utopia. It’s supports and empowers a community of emerging broadcasters, artists, musicians, writers and thinkers from the fringes – and that includes me, because this months marks exactly TWENTY YEARS since I started volunteering as a callow youth back in 2004!
It’s a passionately engaged community of listeners as well. Here’s the kind of thing just a few of them had to say about the station:
“The vibes, the energy, the songs, the insight, the metal chimes, the hosting. It’s so perfect and powerful.” – “We need you more than ever.” – “Many thanks for the music during these trying times.” – “A voice of sanity in the gale of the world!” – “Thank you for sending antidepressants down the radio waves every weekend.” – “It’s wonderful to see this kind of excitement!” – “You just don’t get this in the dross of most other radio.” – “I love Resonance because it gives artists space to be creative and be themselves in a crazy time like this!” – “A truly unique outlet.”
But unfortunately these things don’t come cheap. Despite the station winning the GOLD award for ‘Publisher or Network of the Year’ at the 2023 Audio Production Awards for the second year running, financing such radical and uncommercial broadcasting does not come cheap and if they cannot raise further funds before Easter 2024 Resonance’s future will become deeply uncertain. Happily there’s lots we can all do to help, including making a donation, becoming a regular donor or supporting the various fundraising events taking place over the next few weeks.
You could also donate your voice – and this is perhaps the quickest and easiest way to make a big difference. Resonance has been commissioned by technology company Logitech to record the voices of up to 900 unique individual speakers by 31 March 2024. The company is commissioning anonymised recordings of speech with no background noise for the purposes of machine learning – to help it to tell the difference between “pure” recordings of different kinds of human speech with no background noise, and human speech with background noise. It’s machine learning, essentially.
Supplying Logitech with this anonymous audio – in addition to their normal activity – offers Resonance the opportunity to significantly increase its income and – to the extent that they can recruit volunteers – the chance to move forward rapidly with their plans for 2024. That is why they’re asking all volunteers, programme makers and listeners to book a slot as soon as possible to visit the new HQ and record a 15 minute speech session in our soundproof room with the help of an engineer (example video here). With a maximum target of 900 sessions before 31 March, Resonance really needs your help – and that of your families, friends, colleagues, listeners and networks to ensure that we’re making the most of this opportunity. So do please consider booking a slot and encouraging others to book one too. Resonance needs you!
Robin The Fog 