Helena De Groot lives in Brussels and makes great radio like The Internet in Sepia, a composition which Helena submitted to this year’s Third Coast Festival Short Docs competition. In the piece, Helena meditates on distance in two dimensions: space, and time. Her narrative clips are supported by music composed by friends’ of hers, which you can find here.

The Third Coast Festival curates audio storytelling, and hosts an annual audio conference and competition. Every year they give a “short docs” challenge, inviting producers of all kinds to explore sound within a few paremeters. Here was this year’s prompt:

Produce a short audio story (2 -3 minutes) that features at least two of your neighbors, includes a color in the title, and contains three consecutive seconds of narrative silence. Stories of all styles are welcome – from documentary to drama – and everything in between.

Remix has a number of Third Coast’s Short Doc sumbissions in our mix. Have a listen:

Full description:

Nowadays she’s a working mom who just bought her first home, but back in college, Angie was better known for her alter ego – Ivy, the Mistress of Metal. Most of the students at her small liberal arts college couldn’t have cared less about Angie’s weekly heavy metal radio show. But at the nearby prison, she was a legend.

UnFictional is one of the new additions to Remix from the inimitable KCRW in LA. Keep an ear out for The Guest DJ Project and the forthcoming Strangers.

While the Supreme Court heard arguments today over the health insurance mandate, Radio Netherlands, of all shops, sent this story our way. CODE RED is an essay written and read by Kairol Rosenthal, a dancer and choreographer from Chicago. Kairol was diagnosed with a complex case of thyroid cancer when she was 27. In this piece — now in rotation on Public Radio Remix — Kairol describes the 100 hours she spent lying to the government and insurance agencies in order to cover her treatment.


Check out her story:

image from Radio Netherlands

Storytelling… it’s like the new rock n’ roll. Following on the success of The Moth (whose podcasts are also on Public Radio Remix), storytelling events are popping up all over the country — and they’re getting more and more local. In Boston, where PRX is located, MassMouth features local storytellers at venues around the city, and gives workshops for newbies. London has a new storytelling series called The Spark, also on PRX.

The one I’m excited about this week is Tales from the South. Tales from the South is a live storytelling event featuring authors and storytellers exclusively from Southern states — Arkansas, Texas, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Alabama to be specific. There’s something special about hearing Southern accents on public radio, maybe because so many popular public radio personalities are trained to use the most neutral-sounding intonation they can. Don’t be put off by the lengthy introductions (I usually just fast-forward), these southern stories are really delightful. In this one, Judith Waller Carol sees her austere father dance for the first time. And in another, a writer finds herself (along with all the neighborhood children) searching for her neighbor’s finger in his backyard, while he waits for it at the hospital.

“Steve Boeddeker has been a film sound designer for ten years. His work has been heard in films like ‘The Village,’ ‘Seven,’ and the re-release of ‘The Exorcist.’ This segment was recorded in 2001, around the time Boeddeker was working on the film ‘From Hell,’ directed by the Hughes brothers. In this piece, he demonstrates how sound can be used to enhance the emotional impact of a scene. This segment was originally produced for Studio 360, and first aired in June, 2002. It has also been heard on: KQED’s Hot Soup (2003) WBEZ’s re:Sound (2004) Third Coast Festival website (2003)”

Check out Jonathan Mitchell’s website, and listen to Sound Design from Hell, right here:

Melissa Robbins Allison

It was 2005. Melissa Robbins Allison was producing a story about games — the game of being a drug dealer, a high school student, a matchmaker — when she interviewed Todd. “Todd Elmer was a new Facebook friend of a friend….  All I knew when I sat down to do the interview was that he was a lawyer, willing to talk about the game of being a lawyer.” But Melissa ended up scrapping hours of tape — the high school student, the exotic dancer, the drug dealer. Todd’s story was just too powerful.

Todd Elmer

In the 2000 presidential election, Todd had been a lawyer for the Gore campaign, and represented the Democratic party in the eventual recount of ballots in Florida. “It seemed like he was ready to tell this story, like he was in a real moment of personal transition.  And it just poured out of him.” Allison interwove his personal story from that contested election with clips from James Carse reading his book, “Finite and Infinite Games,” creating a sound collage which illuminates the emotional and theoretical complexities of political elections.

Now in rotation: this highly recommended listen!

“Here I am, trying, during my workday, to NOT think about remix radio, but I’m hooked. Somewhere I read an article referring to the programming as “driveway moments” and I thought that meant, perhaps, that everyone was sitting in their cars in their driveways, as I do, with the radio on after work because they couldn’t interrupt their PRX listening and go home. The stories and voices you bring to your listeners are inspiring, enlightening, touching, and so full of truth, or I guess I mean honesty. I am a bundle of resonance. I plan to retire next June and now I think I know what I want to do when I grow up. Love you guys. Thanks for opening a new channel between my brain and my heart.”

We were like whoa. Opening a new channel between the brain and the heart? That is the nicest things anyone has ever said to us! But it’s hardly us programmers who deserve these kudos. It’s the incredible talent we showcase on Remix. Whether it’s one of New Hampshire Public Radio’s expert hosts interviewing an NPR music critic unknown details of John Lennon’s life, or producer Jason Samilski creating a new kind of poetic landscape with his own voice, thoughts, and original banjo and accordian music — good radio does, somehow, put our brains in touch with our hearts.

And WALE, a radio poem supported by original music, produced by new PRX producer, Jason Samilski. Jason is a Toronto-based writer and sound producer who works in radio plays, music, and short stories. Listen:

Bath image by Emanuela Franchini, Desert image by Jason Samilski.