XMTR AudioArts Festival
JUDE MONTAGUE
Sound tells stories. Lucia Scazzochio from Social Broadcasts (Resonance FM) has settled in St Leonards-on-Sea and set up an international festival, XMTR – a standard tech abbreviation for a radio transmitter.
DinahBird at Stereo Retro, Kings Road, XMTR 2025
The purpose is to bring practitioners from different areas of this growing community to our particular seaside space and to encourage the production of creative audio arts in the town. This is the third year, the first being a collaboration with Sono Electro. She says “The response to the open call was incredible. Anyone who works in podcasting or radio will know we’re in a big moment of flux and we’re all having to find innovative ways to keep the craft alive and thriving.”
XMTR Pulse, a day of debate and conversation, will begin the festival with an international invite-only day symposium exploring the future of creative audio. Podcasters, radio-makers; sound artists will discuss and share how the field is funded and how broadcast happens in 2026 and beyond.
This will be followed by an audio with a varied programme including a short preview of a new John Logie Baird Musical by Jude Montague, Matt Armstrong and Duncan Reekie which will show at the Stables Theatre early in 2027. Those who love to sauna have been sharing thoughts on this with Hayley Clarke to make a listening installation at Samphire Sauna.
St Leonards, says Lucia, is “a perfect place for this kind of multi-space festival, as there are so many interesting venues run by generous and passionate people. The atmosphere is open and curious and there is a thriving audio arts community, many of whom are participating.”
PROGRAMME HIGHLIGHTS
Manhunt is a 7-episode location- based audio-drama, in which physical traces take you on a location-based journey to real venues. The plot draws on tropes of espionage and cold-war to merge fiction and reality, causing participants to feel as though St Leonards might be a film set.
In St Leonards Church, Daniel Brandt will put together an audiovisual installation – multi-faith prayer room – that brings 120 voices from around the world into a presentation of faith, rituals and future. This diverse philosophical and religious enquiry will invite participants to reflect on the human mind in 2026 in a new kind of church polyphony.
A live broadcast, Radio Locale, based in DayGlo Records on Silchester Road and led by Ed Baxter, will present stories from the neighbourhood as people pop by and join in. Those who want to plan their participation in advance can email [email protected].
AND MORE. …
Other festival highlights include Tony Birch’s long-term project, which captures the amazing fleeting space created under the pier twice a day. The Pier Sings captures the sound of the waves and resonance of the structure at high tide and plays it back binaurally in the same position at low tide. “There’s something beautifully counterpoint about the relationship of the tide with the solar day. High noon is always high noon, but the tide can be anywhere in its cycle at that point. The structure also catches things being thrown around by the sea – bits of the recently beached yacht at Goat Ledge are going, I fear, to be making appearances for a while,” Tony adds, “Maybe the pier is saving things.”
Paris-based sound and radio artist DinahBird returns, with Invisible Hands, stories from women working in all aspects of the recording industry. For her XMTR residency she will visit the Marconi oral history archive in Essex to find out about the assembly lines that produced the minute parts of microphones, tape-heads, tone-arms and radio sets.
She hopes to highlight the women workers whose presence is unrepresented in radio history. St Leonards has a rich history of audiovisual production, so this project is especially locally relevant.
Clingradio turns salon hairdryers into listening devices with a built-in sound system and repurposed timer dial as the volume control. These play different compilations of the weekly radio show Clingradio, which was produced by Sarah Washington for the first year of Resonance FM from 2002-3. The Wind Phone, set up by Nanna Hauge Kristensen and inspired by a Japanese post-earthquake phenomenon, creates a communication channel between the living and the dead.
The day after the festival sees a special field trip to Dungeness led by Isobel Anderson, who will give a personal tour to an area known for its sound mirrors, as well as for Derek Jarman’s Prospect Cottage.
FREE EVENTS AND CHILDREN’S EVENTS
Festival tickets will give access to the entire programme, but there are also free events open to everyone. These include Meet Me at the Rose Garden from Cath Colour Carver, a deep-listening meditative experience to be held in Warrior Square’s volunteer-maintained rose garden, and involving costumes and, primarily, tinkling bells.
The event offers a way to channel the sensory input from different flowers. There will also be a Haitian brass parade organised by Jo Hutton, dedicated to the only Queen of Haiti, Marie Louise Coidavid, who lived in Hastings from 1821 to 1824. Through a process of blowing into handmade horns, the event will associate participants, in sound, with the tale of the Haitian Revolution, through which Haiti became the first independent black nation-state. The royal family’s history is extraordinary and dramatic.
Events specifically for children include Sonic Questing in which five artists layer up sounds into an immersive universe. Waves crashing on the shore, a gurgling swamp and a giant supermarket will inspire curiosity and form story arcs in workshops suitable for 8-12-year-olds. In an event called Foley Follies, 11-19-year-olds will create their own live sound effects using a range of materials from pebbles to hot-water bottles, all amplified through specialist microphones.
XMTR 3 Programme, 25-27 September. Friday 25 September: XMTR PULSE + Audio Cabaret Festival Launch. Saturday 26 + Sunday 27: XMTR FESTIVAL Monday 27th: Dungeness Field Trip. Tickets and info from xmtr.com/festival
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