CWCH collective

A live collaborative radio art performance series, improvised around changing themes by a stellar line-up of sound and radio artists.

Series one had 15 editions featuring 16 players, a photographer and 2 special guests. 2 further editions were festival specials.

Produced by Mobile Radio with streaming support from π-node, CWCH collective shows were broadcast live on Thursdays from 21:00 – 22:00 CEST on Resonance Extra in Brighton, Bristol, Cambridge, London and Norwich on DAB, π-node in Mulhouse and Paris on DAB, WGXC and Wavefarm in the Upper Hudson Valley on FM and AM, Soundart Radio in Dartington on FM, and Radio Tsonami in Valparaiso online. There were subsequent rebroadcasts by Radio Ara in Luxembourg, JET FM in Nantes, Radio Panik in Brussels and Radio Orange in Vienna on FM.

Worker-artists convene a hive broadcast of indiscriminately gathered sound-pollen, transmitting codified messages to kindred folk. Each week a potent gang of sound artists are at play, exploring whatever is on their minds. Style guide: Anything goes

Below you can find:

A history and introduction of the CWCH collective
Radio and print reviews
The full audio archive
A CWCH collective photo collection

Introduction and history

The CWCH collective is a modern-day revival of an anarchic sound art event which Sarah put together above the Dragon Bar near Old Street in London around the year 2000. This featured an incredible line-up of pioneering sound artists who were mostly studying Sonic Arts at the University of Middlesex. Nowadays her compatriots in sound are spread far and wide, so she decided to bring a new group of these together online in an effort to re-establish the spirit of the original CWCH – a Welsh word meaning boat or hive (pronounced like the German kuch). Twenty years ago when she so named it, Sarah thought the word she was using was cwtch – meaning a heartfelt hug. That turned out to be an apposite misunderstanding, as this meaning inspired the desire to work virtually in 2020 due to a period of externally enforced personal distancing. Yet this time around the word ‘hive’ best describes the playing actions and mentality of the participants.

The way CWCH works in today’s incarnation is that multiple livestreams are received from around the world at Mobile Radio’s home studio in Ürzig (Germany) via π-node’s server in France. Sarah combines these with her own and Knut’s on-site sounds to tie everything together into a realtime composition, while simultaneously balancing the levels of all the incoming sources to create a coherent final broadcast mix. There is a lengthy sound check to help with this process and minimise the amount of mixing needed during the show. The players streaming in can only hear themselves back in the final mix after an internet-induced delay of between 10 and 30 seconds, necessitating that they take a leap of faith in each moment and ‘play into the future’.

The collective quickly settled into a group of 11 sound artists (plus 1 photographer who became accidentally attached during the first broadcast), based in 9 separate locations across 5 countries. Due to the desire to give other players an opportunity when there were gaps, by the time series one came to a close there had been 16 players streaming from 14 locations across 9 countries, plus two special guest contributors who either called in live or sent material to be freely incorporated. The highest number playing together in a single show was 13, for the final performance of the series which took place at the Saarländische Künstlerhaus in Saarbrücken with four of the players in situ at the venue and the rest streaming in as usual. Two subsequent specials for the Tsonami festival in Chile included further guests and a maximum of 16 players.

Sarah began putting the group together spontaneously with artists she happened to be in contact with at the time. Very soon there were more than enough sound sources to tackle and everyone wanted to continue playing (therefore the membership did not regularly rotate between a wider group as expected until the final few weeks of series one). This rapid consolidation of weekly contributors greatly helped in the realisation of Sarah’s primary aim – to establish a specific system which inherently allows a distinct aesthetic to develop. Thus CWCH collective was reborn in 2020 with a new hive mind. Further series and/or special editions are anticipated.

Press reviews

After listening to a few editions, music journalist Hubert Steins was so intrigued by the CWCH collective workings that he decided to come to the season finale performance in Saarbrücken. Show excerpts and interview snippets became an in-depth hour-long portrait of Sarah and the collective for national German public radio channel Deutschlandradio Kultur, which can still be accessed here.

MusikTexte, the revered German New Music quarterly, picked up an edited version of Hubert’s radio manuscript, and selected Sarah for the cover photo.