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David Adebiyi is a Lagos-born scientist and writer who lives in a flat-share on a housing estate in London’s Herne Hill. The balcony outside his living room window looks on to a shared courtyard where residents lay out their yoga mats in the mornings and, on warm days, his Brazilian neighbours make use of the communal barbecue equipment. Adebiyi says he is envious of those living opposite whose flats get better light than his: “At sunset, [when] you get that lovely golden light that streaks across the sky, that’s when the jealousy comes up. But you get the sun you get.”
Adebiyi is featured in Windows, a warmly meditative podcast from London-based network Transmission Roundhouse, which showcases the work of rising audio makers aged 18-25. Ivan d’Avoine and Derick Armah are the producers, and their idea is simple: to go into people’s homes and ask them what they see out of their window.
It’s a question that invariably leads to reflections on community, domesticity and the cheek-by-jowl nature of city living which, Adebiyi notes, can mean that “everyone’s business spills into the shared space.” The series is also full of the sounds of an urban home: a boiling kettle, a teapot being filled, plus birdsong, aircraft passing overhead and voices drifting in from outside. When Adebiyi says of his flat, “There is comfort in the very walls,” the listener can feel it too.
D’Avoine and Armah also talk to Jill Rock, an octogenarian ex-teacher and sculptor who makes work out of found objects from nature, and who lives in the Brunswick Centre, a grade II listed modernist complex in central London. She loves the light afforded by the building’s prominent windows and the “definitive” view which allows her to see London landmarks Centre Point and the BT Tower. At the time of recording, the BT Tower’s digital message board carries a notice saying: “People die on our roads.” Rock recalls the time it notified Londoners that David Bowie had died, prompting pedestrians in her neighbourhood to break into a spontaneous rendition of “Starman”.
Windows reminds me a little of Where Are You Going?, a podcast based on a single question put to strangers which yields fascinating snapshots of human life. While D’Avoine and Armah could dig deeper with their interviews — I wanted to know more about Rock’s art and the gathering of her materials — the sound design, which interweaves music and the everyday sounds we normally tune out, is truly lovely.
There are lots more gems on Transmission Roundhouse — and a reason why its audio makers have won awards. I can recommend UnReality by Talia Augustidis, a series of shorts on the collision of fiction and reality. In “Sleep Talks”, Augustidis records surreal exchanges with her sleep-talking boyfriend while in “Dad Jokes” she has a conversation with her father about why he became the focus of her stand-up routine.
audioboom.com
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