#555: The descent
We invited the authors to the Worm studio to make a radiopiece for us last autumn (2025). This the result. The piece lasts 38 minutes, after that we added some trash from our vaults.
This episode “The descent” assembles a constellation of materials captured through tests and readings, primarily from Alice Notley’s “The Descent of Alette”. These materials are brought together to form a collage of fragments comprising microphone experiments, different voice treatments, on-site synthesiser explorations and repetitions intertwining natural and synthetic textures, ranging from environmental sounds such as birdsong to drone-like tonalities. The piece gathers the residue of long studio hours where waking and dreaming fold into one another. Like Notley’s main character moving through shifting realms, it drifts between states of clarity and murmur, reverie, mumbles, and the ongoing question of what becomes audible or comprehensible.
There are also snippets from texts by Anne Carson, Gertrude Stein, and Theresa Hak Kyung Cha.
Marjolein Guldentops and Accou Laposte are a Brussels-based duo who explore the intersection of language, technology, performance and experimental sound. They treat voice and text as unstable materials open to deconstruction, reassembly and transformation.
