MIXTAPE RADIO is a monthly episodic radio program made for resonance extra that blends  textured audio from cassette recordings by Joe Wilson and Chanelle Collier with tonal imagery by Bruna Volpi and Jake Terrey. Sound engineering by Ollie Brown.

Joe and Chanelle’s audio recordings encompass ambient sounds, conversation, experimental composition and improvised instrumental response. Cassette drones, loop pedals, voice and guitar are used to echo, mimic or bend over bird calls, thunderstorms, night sounds, indistinguishable chatter, museum reverberations and urban movement. These moments captured to tape are presented in two halves as an A-side/B-side format. 

Enriched by visual counterpoints for each episode, Bruna’s critical eye forms an ambiguous tonal narrative from Jake's method of stumbling into excellence. Mountain, valley, glacier, and urban horizon are presented in stereo format, to parallel the A-side/B-side format.

This program has been made on the stolen lands of the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation, we pay respect to the Elders both past and present

Supported by Higher Ground Studios

Field Notes

Side A - Up Side

The Renshaws Minjerriba Retreat; Birds; The Running Bath; Chanelle Sings A Long Way From Home; Heavy Electric Guitar Riff In D; Island Frogs and Crickets; Daybreak Birds; Drone Loops; Delays; Vocal Loops; Open Atmosphere Guitar Loops; Steel Rings.

Side B - Down Side

Cassette Tape Deck; Guitar Loops in (Malady) G; Vocal; Birds; Pause - Resume.

From the Archive: ISLAND SIX A and ISLAND SIX B; Joe & chanelle were visiting artists at the The Renshaw Gallery Residency and Minjerriba Retreat, November to December 2022.

The Minjerriba Retreat is located 30km east of Brisbane on Minjerriba (North Stradbroke Island), the 2nd largest sand island in the world. Home to the indigenous Quandmooka people, Minjerriba is also rich in flora and fauna including rare and endangered animals. The residency is a two bedroom family holiday shack. Artists are invited to stay without working as a respite from demands of running an art practice.

Side A - Urgently

Field recording of European museum with morning birds and amplifier feedback from guitar; complaints from Mum about washing clothes in the copper; undulating chords with vocal and crickets from Bundanon; pitch alteration on octave pedal; drone and feedback over museum sounds and harmonics in E major followed by a riff in E minor, ‘Heart Starts Beating Too Fast’.

Free Love: “A language that demands, urgently and violently: care. A generative exchange and agency in labour. A criticality through care, using play. A position that can be both active in participation and maintain the potential to deactivate, become divested. Doing something nice, flying a kite, or having a picnic. Just looking to be invited to converse, an extension of love to collapse two worlds; work and life.

Catered for by massive failure as a means of opening. Doing over making to relocate the work to the action. Relocating the site of art to the body and the use of time. A revolutionary release of time through play as resistance. Constructed relationships, situations, with an emphasis to act freely; to resist the positions of interest. A domain of emancipation and kinship for a subjective body." - Joe

Side B - Violently

Field recording of a visit to Palais Tokyo followed by a drone melody malady in G major with lead guitar; feedback with studio improvements such as making a shelf using a timber router, with museum crowd both clean and distorted; continuing drone sounds; crowds under compressed guitar handling and amp noise followed by chords with feedback; storm outside the studio and gallery opening night crowds.

A Lover’s Cheekbone: “A play that happens to be naturally abrasive to the system. It scratches against the sides on its way past. Maybe doing a bit of damage in the process of making contact. Not adversarial. It just doesn’t stay in its lane or conform to the right shape. Joyful and harsh. Always making a play for a kind of loving 'fuck you', full of intimacy and without concern for any consequence but enjoyment, kinship, friendship, comradery, the gang, the good life, the game.

A hypothetical but actually used playing field not made of spite or hate or jealousy. There are no sour grapes growing here. Just the things we do that happen to be antithetical to the status quo: hard work. The lazy artist. The drinking artist. The joker. The lark. All resistant. Revolutionaries even, if given enough purpose, and against the machine simply for not being welcome in its workings.

Not in protest, just not still enough to remain squarely in an assigned place. That place, comfortable to others, that is easily read. Forever willing to deploy a playful elbow to a ‘lover’s’ cheekbone to guard that sensitive spot, to avoid the grabbing of an unsuspecting nerve, a flinch in defense of submission, sometimes leaving a bruise, a wound, but necessary just the same. 'I will not show my belly if you will not show yours'. Not even for the promise of a kiss.” – Chanelle

Sounds (guitar, vocals, samples and pedals) by Joe and Chanelle. Oral storytelling by Jenny Magrath. Router sounds by Oliver Wagner

This episode was a cassette recording presented as 1 of 10 tapes for the Visual Arts Emerging Fellowship (VAEF), with Artspace, Sydney. Presented in partnership with National Art School Gallery, curated by Scott Elliot, Alexie Glass-Kantor and Elyse Goldfinch.

This episode was made as part of the Bundanon Trust artists in residence programme, and has been performed live at the Bundanon Museum. The Museum is on the stolen land of the Dharawal and Dhurga language groups.

Field Notes

Side A - For Kites

• Sounds made on Residency, Bundanon Trust, October 2022, Development # 2.

A day in the rehearsal space, experimental sound, guitar pedals and vocals. Casio Watch Alarm; Fender Delux Reverb Tone Master Amplifier, Reverb, Vibrato; Boss ME-70 Multi Effects, Compression, Classic Distortion, Delay, Loop Pedal, Expression Pedal Octave Pitch Shift; Panasonic SlimLine RQ 2102 Cassette Recorder, Field Recording ; Boss VE-20 Vocal Performer, Reverb, Looper Pedal.

The Wind and the Sun. Playing the cassette BUN 2_8 Side A. In the grassy field where the kangaroos gather at dusk; a HEAVY wind. The Mona Lisa, a heavy kite. SOUND and sun blaring. Kite flyers running. Skin tingling. A concert to nature. Satisfying exhaustion. – Joe Wilson

Side B – The Storm

• Field Recording of a thunderstorm made on Residency at Bundanon Trust, August - October 2023, Development # 3 & 4.

A Personal Note, a Broken Heart, a Broken Body. Bundanon, a gully flat. Surrounded by hills. The storm is caught on the high rocks and is flung around the encroaching bushland. The lightning sheers across the last of the evening’s sunlight, across the way, a distance. The thunder chases the light, the sound chases the cut sky. Drawing closer. Volume rising. Bright white cracks become total for an instant. Birds continue to sing. Trees fall. – Joe Wilson