Reflections on making the podcast

The podcast conjures up the memory of being with the Drake Music staff team on our first and only day we had together in our artist residency before the Lockdown. The DM team’s sharing and our togetherness is rendered in the aliveness of how music feels when we experience it and enjoy it.

During Lockdown and remote working, Sonia and my barriers clashed quite loudly and then they clattered to the floor. We both peered up at each other as if to pose “Oh dear, what now?” And then we giggled. And giggled some more.

Sonia responded to the podcast as a whole and encompassed the energy of the world during lockdown and the brief into one song. It felt poignant that it was placed at the end of the podcast, with a rush of sea that continuously, over and over again, lapped up on the sand. I learned how tremendously powerful placement of songs were in a podcast, even when attending to it in an abstract way.

Sonia found birdsong and we added it to the forest where I’d discovered Carien was. Beside me, and all around us, was birdsong in a forest that opened up into a wide field, lacking trees. Sonia is there with me also, observing.

Together we discovered Tom who existed in a song. In a room with posters and music, Sonia and I existed in the cracks of the wall, feeling our way through Tom’s sense of humour and impatience and we mirrored his humour, drifting in and out with the sound of the tide over Sonia’s voice towards the end.

You see, Sonia and I were very adamant we wanted to create an abstract podcast, one where listeners could go to the places they’d guided us to, even if they weren’t aware that they had. We wanted to exist, but only as musicians revealing each moment as sound.

People have a lot of power in what they bring to a room. Without them, Sonia and I would have nothing new to discover. I’d heard sea splashing against a stone wall and fisherman talking loudly as Myriam had described her hometown. The wind became Louis as he guided us around the landscape, with each decision he made in the choice of words as wind changes form around every element of the environment.

Each member of Drake Music brought us to spaces that were arresting like Joy, who I felt I could see behind the glass in a rain drenched street.

So much power in our collaboration despite our isolation and remoteness.

Gareth held and hosted a space so that Sonia and I could see how the podcast affected audiences. This offered up vital information we needed towards the text description of the podcast. I needed to see reactions in people’s faces about how the podcast made them feel. Still different to a script and to a simple description of songs, text can word paint, songs can be heard and felt in textured language on paper or on screen.

Making this podcast made me realise there is power in exploring the creative process of journeying in sound and it is through paying attention to the radical nuances of how we relate to each other that we become radical musicians and sound artists.