Shipwreck Radio - July 13

It’s that time of year when a (no longer) young man’s thoughts turn naturally to the Sonic Structures and Enigmatic Episodes of Shipwreck Radio. Read the introduction to this series here.

JULY 13 - SHIPWRECK RADIO: FINAL BROADCASTS

The opening chimes and welcome are nearly uncanny in their clarity, then the track goes right to a heavily processed vocal sample and already unrecognizable phrase where the only intelligible words are “Shipwreck radio“. The sample repeats, each time more processed than the last, the sounds drawn out into long buzzing drones. Between each iteration, is a silence, which, like the quickly inhuman sounding vocal sample, is drawn out longer and longer each time. This, unfortunately, is my least favorite of the Shipwreck Radio tracks, unlike many of the other tracks which seem deceptively simple, this one is just… simple, with the repeating (if longer each time) pattern of processed buzzing vocal sample and then silence. Most other tracks would establish a pattern and then subvert or break it, but regrettably, this is not the case with July 13. There is no surprise awaiting you down in the depths of July 13 as it drags on for 30 minutes, the pattern is establish early and drags on, with the only predictable change of each iteration being longer than the last…But one lackluster track out of the twenty that comprise the Shipwreck Radio sessions? That’s not bad at all.

Shipwreck Radio - Introduction and June 3

 

It’s that time of year when a (no longer) young man’s thoughts turn naturally to the Sonic Structures and Enigmatic Episodes of Shipwreck Radio.

Shipwreck Radio is a series of albums by Nurse With Wound documenting their residency in Lofoten, Norway during June and July 2004. Invited to stay in the unofficial capital, fishing village Svolvær, Steven Stapleton and Colin Potter were commissioned to produce 3 radio broadcasts per week for local station Lofotradioen of music constructed from whatever they heard or could find around the island. The project was instigated by Anne Hilde Neset and Rob Young of The Wire and by Kunst I Nordland, an organisation committed to bringing contemporary art to county of Nordland.

The duo created 24 broadcasts in total, each of either 15 or 30 minutes duration. Each broadcast was preceded by a jingle of a male voice saying "Velkommen Til Utvær" followed by a female voice saying the English translation "Welcome To Utvær", Utvær being the most remote island in Lofoten, with no permanent residents but 2 lighthouse keepers on hand. Many of the broadcasts treated or manipulated the two introductory voices with one consisting of nothing but such manipulations. 20 of these transmissions have been made available by Nurse With Wound across a number of separate releases with all tracks listed only by the date of original broadcast. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shipwreck_Radio

I have been obsessed with these albums since I first encountered them in 2007 when I was collecting and consuming as much as I could of Nurse With Wound. The series consists of three main albums: Volume One, Volume Two and Final Broadcasts, and two bonus albums: Lofoten Deadhead and Gulls Just Wanna Have Fun.

During the market crash of 2008, I was working in brokerage ops opening self-directed trading accounts for fools who thought they could cash in on cheap stock trading, often working 12-14 hour days, six days a week and these albums were on heavy rotation, helping to keep me sane.

Each track on the three main albums, as well as Lofoten Deadhead, bears the date of its original broadcast, and for the last five years I've had a tradition of listening to each track on its namesake date.  There are twenty tracks associated with nineteen dates between June and July, and for each I'll be provided a descriptive review of the track for that date, or two tracks, in the case of June 5. All the tracks are available to stream for free on Bandcamp.com, so my hope is that this series will encourage readers to discover these eerie, meditative and haunting soundscapes.

JUNE 3 - SHIPWRECK RADIO VOLUME ONE

Here is one of the ghostliest of the Shipwreck Radio tracks, the introductory chimes and greetings so stretched and spectral as to be nearly unintelligible. They give way to a short-lived silence, then a low reverberating hollow sound that becomes the phantasmal base the song is built upon. After a minute, the low hollowness is joined by a dull and irregular thudding that lingers at the edge of the track, as well as a wraithlike melody, that is almost brassy. The bass reverberations build up and sound like the deep echoing growl of some nocturnal predator hunting in a pitch black cave. At three minutes a thrumming mechanical noise joins and the clatterings come more to the front, becoming sharper. By the five minute mark the thrumming has metamorphosed into something like a door creaking in the basement of some sinister house built too near the cliff’s edge, though it remains too deep for that, remaining uncannily on the edge of any number of noises that might cause you to shudder in the dark, as the phantom melody levitates above the rumbling bass at the base of the song. Around eight minutes, a melody emerges enough to sound voicelike– a nearly mute banshee wailing on a moonless night, gloomy and meditative. The soft but ominous track dares you to try and find comfort in it, to let yourself to be mesmerized and taken in by its inky beauty. Here is another track that is easy to dismiss when you give it only cursory attention but which is captivating and fathomless when you dive into it with your full attention.