the night air

Tony Barrell, veteran collagist known for his humour and his exploration of the unusual and the unexplained signs off in this his Last Collage for the Night Air program which he helped start.

It’s a retrospective of his radio work from the seminal Sunday afternoon at the movies as heard on 2JJ FM in the late 1970’s thru to digital collages made for radio National till 2008. He characterises his playful and thought provoking oblique cut up essays as “Listening for pleasure”.

For more info on his career see his Wikipedia entry
Download both parts here and here

For more on the art of the montage

“The Night Air” is a phrase so loaded with obscure meanings and nocturnal poetic possibilities that it’s an irresistable favorite of fictionists. We’re always typing “Night Air” into web searches and turn up all sorts of things. So we’ve decided to make a regular feature of them. Here are the first.

A Quiet Corner of the Dorms Roof, Wednesday Night
By Reno of the Turks(Reno of the Turks)
There was a sky out there, full of clouds though it might be, and he was perfectly content to sit on the roof and look up at it, letting the chill of the night air bite at his face. Reminded him that he was alive. …
Don’t Step On The Flowers - http://raspberryturk.livejournal.com/

Learning Curve (5/?)
By nytel(nytel)
When she broke through the door onto the balcony, she gulped in deep breaths of the night air as all her control unraveled. Tears obscured her vision so badly she could barely see, but somehow she found her way to the far corner of the …
Nytel - http://nytel.livejournal.com/

As inveterate collagists, we at The Night Air are big fans of a podcast called Some Assembly Required. If you have a taste for cut’n'pastry we commend to you the weekly selection cooked up by master media chef Jon Nelson. Here’s what he says about it.

Hosted by Jon Nelson, since January of 1999, Some Assembly Required features work by a variety of artists and groups who work with bits and pieces of their media environments, giving something back to the cultural landscape from which they so enthusiastically appropriate.

The genre is young, despite examples dating as far back as 1961, when James Tenney constructed a tape collage borrowing heavily from cut-up fragments of a recording by Elvis Presley. Both provocative and surreal, this style continues to evolve and to challenge.

Since its inception in 1999, Nelson has produced over two dozen artist features, interviewing everyone from John Oswald and The Evolution Control Committee, to Christian Marclay and DJ Spooky - providing a variety of unique perspectives on the nature of this daring and creative style of expression. For a complete list of artists interviewed on Some Assembly Required (many of which are now available to download), click HERE.

Jump to his site

Listen to Jon’s works

Too modern, too ugly, too tall?

In the skyscraper just how high can you go? This Night Air we climb high-rises, modern and medieval. Come with us as we go up a vertiginous stack of heady ideas and lofty soundscapes until we reach the very top.

Hold your spinning head as you gaze out at the wide world from towers of power - is that jet headed our way….?

Featuring the powerful music of visionary Greek modern classical composer Jani Christou. Who drew on such diverse influences as Jungian psychology, ancient Egyptian mythology and the brutal Junta repression of 1970’s Greece to compose some of the most toweringly intense and cerebral sound works of the 20th C. His life was tragically cut short by a car accident, and he left only a relatively small cultural footprint for one of his stature. We feature some tracks from the excellent 1992 Edition RZ compilation LP. More info on this giant at janichristou.org

download this audio adventure here

This episode we’re entertaining a bit of Space Doubt. Exploring doubt as well as space as we travel from the lunar voyage of 1969 to the European Space Agency’s current search of deep space. There’s the reverential space of monastic silence and something for those who need to see it all to believe.
We check out illusions, apparitions and discoveries in space — the inner and the outer, the believer and the doubter.
We feature the music of Sun Ra and also Dave Noyze Burraston, you can download lots of his great music here; www.noyzelab.com

download this audio adventure here

Inventor/Musician Bart Hopkin published the wonderfully inspiring journal, Experimental Musical Instruments.
His website www.windworld.com, is a treasure-trove of ideas and examples of applied sonic imaginings and I highly recommend it to all of you with an “a-normal” musical bent. He has produced CDs of beautiful other worldy music with his inventions, and his book “Musical Instrument Design” http://windworld.com/products/mid.html is a DIY classic.