If we want to protect the environment we first need to reconnect with what is

around us. Let’s start listening…

RADIOPHONICx is a communal listening event that presents international radio art to a live audience. Together we listen to exciting and award-winning audio work from around the world. Experience thought-provoking audio drama, poetic sound pieces, experimental narratives and surrealist radio in a relaxed atmosphere. There will be sofas, but feel free to bring extra cushions. After listening there will be time to share our thoughts and discuss the work with the artists and curator. Each session will have a specific theme, exploring different radio art genres and styles.

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Beneath the surface - sounds of nature

If we want to protect the environment we first need to reconnect with what is around us. Let’s start listening…

Wildly tender is they music by Merzouga, Germany, 55min

Underwater Cairngorms by David del la Haye and Mhairi Hall, Newcastle, 10min

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Wildly tender is they music by Merzouga, Germany, 55 min, German with English video subtitles

In her “Poems from the Moor” Emily Brontë evokes the bleak beauty of her Yorkshire home. The Cologne sound-art duo Merzouga transposes her poems into contemporary songs, orchestrated with field-recordings from various moors and wetlands. The listeners is invited to a fascinating habitat and its world of sound. There is an archive of the landscape hidden in the layers of peat, grasses, mosses and pollen, which have been preserved in the wet moor for ten-thousands of years.

The duo Merzouga sets Emily's poems to music and orchestrates them with an electro-acoustic sound composition of bio-acoustic field-recordings by the late Tom Lawrence, who extensively recorded and studied stridulating water beetles in the Pollardstown Fen. By interweaving music and science, sound-art and poetry, Merzouga explores the importance of moors in the face of the climate-crisis and attempts to raise interest for this fascinating habitat between water and land. Wildly tender is thy music was awarded the 2025 Grand Prix Nova in Gold.

Electronic musician Eva Pöpplein and bassist Janko Hanushevsky met during their studies at the Conservatory of the City of Vienna. Since 2005 they have been working together as duo Merzouga, developing elaborate sound-compositions, sound-installations, ars acustica, radio drama, and radio documentaries. Their work have premiered at Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, Deutschlandfunk, Deutsche Oper am Rhein…Their radio productions have received several international awards, including the Grand Prix Nova in Gold and Prix Marulic. Their radio work has been broadcast by the German state broadcasters and numerous European broadcasters. They live and work in Cologne, Germany.

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Underwater Cairngorms, by David de la Haye and Mhairi Hall, UK, 10min

An Càrn Gorm is the Gaelic name for Cairngorm mountain. From the summit, spectacular views of the valleys in Badenoch and Strathspey reveal many bodies of water - ancient lochs and pristine rivers. Underwater Cairngorms combines the mysterious underwater soundscapes of freshwater lochs with impressionistic piano composition by composer Mhairi Hall. This unique collaboration between piano, harmonium, and underwater soundscape transports the listener to another world. Although sounding digitally processed, the album is almost entirely acoustic, from the resonance of the piano strings, the breath of harmonium bellows, the reverbs of lochs and the sounds of aquatic nature.

David de la Haye listens where human ears fail. His pioneering hydrophone work in freshwater habitats reveals the complex soundscapes of aquatic life, while improvised, glitchy electronics reimagine them in real-time performance. What emerges sits somewhere between nature documentary and abstract experiment; David de la Haye’s work has been broadcasted at BBC Radio and won several awards over the years. Each performance takes the listener on an underwater journey, from Scottish lochs to urban ponds.

Mhairi Hall was born and brought up in Aviemore, which lies in the heart of the central Highlands of Scotland. She has performed internationally and recorded with many leading musicians, bands and singers and is regarded as one of the finest and most creative pianists from Scotland. She received the Hands up for Trad IGNITION AWARD 2020 for 'Innovation in Music' for Airs.

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Please note we are unable to offer refunds. You can click here (https://cobaltstudios.co.uk/about-us/faqs/) to view our full refunds policy.

Description supplied by the event organiser.