Tune in for noise, esoteric conversations and a weird time
“Warning, you are not ready,” began Mc.pale’s hour long slot, F*k*ng_De$troYed_4ever at 3 p.m. on Jan. 22. IMCA RAYDEEOH, started by Sam Bordeleau and Ale O’Sullivan, is a new web radio program running on a submission basis intended to bring together Concordia students, faculty and staff with experimental audio work. After working together at the IMCA depot, Bordeleau and O’Sullivan saw a need for community within their program, and sought to create a community-oriented space that would transcend physical boundaries. Without the contribution of Matt Halpenny, who coded the website (and designed by Bordelau), the radio simply wouldn’t exist.
F*k*ng_De$troYed_4ever is one of a handful of truly weird shows. Mc.pale, the show’s host, describes their piece on the radio’s schedule as “two extra-terrestrial humanoïd-cyborgs listening to their local Top 40 Hits radio in their flying dark matter plasma bubble; this is what they hear. Punching DVDs, dropping a VHS from the top of, drilling a hole in a USB key. Slowly inserting a needle in one’s ear.”
Keeping the spirit of the Intermedia program, which has abandoned its old name, Intermedia and Cyber Arts, in favour of the former, IMCA RAYDEEOH promises to play any and all original submissions as long as they are respectful, accessible, inclusive and accountable.
As stated in their policies, IMCA RAYDEEOH “will not accept any material that supports violent, discriminatory or oppressive behavior such as (but not limited to) racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, ableism, ageism and religion or culture discrimination.”
The radio program was inspired by platforms like BUMP TV, a public-access web broadcasting station based in Toronto, run entirely on a volunteer-basis. The platform accepts all sorts of bizarre audio and visual work.
From static to screeching, old French-Canadian children’s music to lo-fi ambient, dancey stuff IMCA RAYDEEOH has it all, like Boioioing! , O’Sullivan’s playful mix, which sounds quite reminiscent of Montreal’s Biodome.
In Postamateur, IMCA student Louis Felix works with spoken word, interviews, conversations and field recordings. Their work is comedic, and in O’Sullivan’s words, “sort of like meta-institutional critique.”
ESOTALK, hosted by the anonymous iced t dove into “A Thousand Plateaus” by psychoanalyst, Félix Guattari and French philosopher, Gilles Deleuze, a book that, according to the hosts, is so overly academic it has lost meaning, mocking academia. They discuss the role of media in our lives as seen in the Netflix Original, The Circle. In the show, eight people are housed in a building and they’re only allowed to interact with each other through social media.
“Social media has actually become so pervasive, such a part of our reality that we don’t even think of it any more,” said iced t. They predict that in this decade we will see the virtual connect with the physical, mixing virtuality and actuality, past augmented reality.
After their trial run in December, last week marked IMCA RAYDEEOH’s first official time on air, playing from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. daily. But, because they’re just starting out, they currently only have enough content to run bi-weekly, replaying old episodes every other week. The next week of new sounds will be in February. Until then, listeners are encouraged to explore episodes on the IMCA RAYDEEOH mixcloud.
Find IMCA RAYDEEOH online on Facebook and Instagram.
Graphic by Sam Bordeleau, courtesy of IMCA RAYDEEOH.
