xyz
Voici l’enregistrement de l’émission Drifting in the Resonance FM Archives du 14 octobre 2026.
* *
Still, archives of airwaves occupy me, encore et encore.
This helps me situate myself, to understand history and my situation in history.
The recordings of today tell the story of Québec and London’s artistic relationship, and I’m surprised how deeply I feel I belong to these communities.
* *
Here, in St. Leonard-on-the-Sea, I recorded properly my first waves.
And I am amazed that waves, like airwaves, produce traces, in infinite ways.
* *
I am the edge of the shore, and I contemplate the infinite horizon, a horizon of wave traces.
I think about the London Musician Collective that begins their activities in 1975 and their radio project, Resonance, more or less 20 years later.
The waves continue to bring life, renewal, and the quiet certainty that all thing flow, return, and are made again, encore et encore.
* *
My knowledge of transnational radiophonic relations in between Europe and North America is far limited.
I’ve been aware of a major festival in 1984 and 1985 organised in Québec by CKRL, La Quinzaine de la radiophonie internationale. (Article forthcoming)
Here’s a contribution to this festival from Radio Got, a radio from the Netherlands.
Listen to the sounds held in this seashell…about someone swimming across the Atlantic to reach this radio festival in Québec.
* *
I discovered this two years ago, in Québec City, after I digitised about twenty sound reels from CKRL over god knows how many weeks. And I found this fragment of the past, which reflects a relationship between Europe and Québec.
Whether I’m on the shores of the English Channel or here on the banks of the Thames in London, I continue to discover archival shells, and I’m impressed by this endless movement.
Here, in London, on the shore of the Resonance FM archives, there is this, recovered through the waves.
* *
This is a recording found on cassette from 15 May 95, in which Ed Baxter can be heard introducing the Fourth Annual Festival of Experimental Music of the London Musicians Collective.
Even if we have no idea what radio waves it was broadcast on, it still constitutes a trace.
* *
There’s a long relationship in between the London Musicians Collective and Québec artistic community, which can be explored…
Based on my research in the LMC archives at the London Communication College, one of the starting points for this relationship is Phil England’s attendance au Festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoraville in 94.
And there are, here and there, traces of communications between the LMC and Ambiances magnétiques label throughout the 90s, possibly dating back to the label’s origins in Montréal in 1983.
Here is one of this label’s cassettes found in the Resonance FM archives – a cassette from Ambiances magnétiques ou Archives magnétiques.
* *
For a long time now, as a crate digger, my mantra and my leitmotif have remained the same :
Open up the box wide to the sky
Unearth the archives
Slow it down
Let the dust settle
And listen to what rises and arise
* *
Here, I am in London,
Here, I am amazed by the airwaves that produce traces, in infinite ways.
And what truly amazes me is to discover a sense of belonging through these traces.
I discover a sense of belonging to a community — of artists, thinkers, doers — de Londres à Québec. Et tout cela, encore et encore dans les archives.
* *
One of the first thing I found in the Resonance FM Archives is a cd from Avatar an artist-run centre dedicated to audio arts in Québec City.
It is written on the case : Québec London Gift Exchange.
June 22, 1998.
This year refere to the first emergence of the Resonance radio station project.
Here’s how this recording begins
* *
Ça, c’est Sylvie Nicolas. A poet from Québec City, that used to do radio à CKIA.
Et moi, je m’étonne, I amaze. Sylvie Nicolas is part of the first sacred transmission of Resonance FM.
* *
Radio Basse-Ville.
It is the radio I come from. The one that gave me life, a radiophonic life.
Avatar, an artists’ organization for audio and electronic art, founded in 93 by Jocelyn Robert.
And to celebrate the summer solstice, five artists from Québec (Jocelyn Robert, David Michaux, Sylvie Nicolas, Chantal Dumas, Steve Lebrasseur) and three from London (Peter Cusack, Tom Wallace et Kaffe Matthews) are creating together, via telephone lines, across the Atlantic.
* *
And this transnational relationship between radio artists from Québec and London does not stop there in ‘98. There was also Christoph Migone, and who else…
* *
We can hear the crackling sound of the recording device – the one from the British Library that recorded the Resonance FM signal during this festival in ‘98.
Recorded a few years earlier with Jean Derome and Tom Walsh, this piece that we just heard is titled Autour d’une musique portuaire, a composition by Claude Schryer for six boats, two trains and the bells of the Notre-Dame Basilica.
* *
What’s next, what’s next do we find in the Resonance FM archives…
Let’s stick to the chronology… and perhaps we can see in it the continuity of the long relationship between the London Musicians Collective and the label Ambiance Magnétique de Montréal…
A disc-jockey by the name of Martin Tétreault came on tour to London in 2000.
* *
And two years later, in 2002, Martin Tétreault curated a tour in U.K. called Turntable Hell.
* *
Cassettes and CDs being exchanged, encounters happening in the 90s and friendships taking shape. You can hear something like joy in Martin Tétreault’s voice, perhaps because he belongs to a community — because he travels with a family of artists, the cartridge family.
* *
So many traces of this transnational relationship can be found in the Resonance FM archive and it’s impossible to say everything, but I’ll say it anyway — hysterically, of course.
For exemple : The empty cd case of Alexandre St-Onge piece : “one hour as spectral voices”,
The envelope with Kid Koala’s postcards, the Montreal DJ who made the album Some of My Best Friends Are DJs.
There are so many stories to tell.
Here, I found recordings of Caroline Kraabel show.
* *
One of my close friends, Pascal, told me he performed one of Carolyne’s compositions with the GRILL, le Grand Groupe Régional d’Improvisation Libérée de Rimouski, in Québec. So Carolyne’s score, and all the notes written on it, travelled across the Atlantic.
The piece is called, « Une note n’écoutant qu’elle-même », directed by Luke Dawson.
* *
And it goes on, and it doesn’t stop. The connections established keep going and grow.
Caroline has also interview Joëlle Léandre, a French double bassist that recently released the album “Jeux de main” with the free improv cellist Remy Bélanger de Beauport on the label Tour de Bras,
* *
And talking about this and repeating that… part of it.. the archives…is the score of who we are.
It’s these connections between artists and labels, these encounters, that we can dig up in the Resonance FM archives.
* *
The archives as time-travel machines, I have been traveling through my memories over the past few weeks.
Going back to my first radio job à CKIA : broadcasting the soundtrack – we heard now – of the Moulin à images, for the 400th anniversary of Québec City, in 2008, a composition by René Lussier.
I also went back to my first interviews… with Sylvie Nicolas… Jocelyn Robert…twelve years ago.
* *
It’s an history far bigger than who I am…
and I find myself in it.