A Duck In A Tree has just passed its 30th weekly episode, and is rapidly becoming a critical venue for practitioners of electronic and found-sound music past and present. Each program is theme-based, but the nature of that theme is usually abstract and intuitive, much like the music that it presents.
In 2012, :Zoviet*France: began assembling a weekly, one-hour radio program titled A Duck In A Tree, which is broadcast by Basic.FM (Newcastle) and streamed on Mixcloud. The program has just passed its 30th weekly episode, and is rapidly becoming a critical venue for practitioners of electronic and found-sound music past and present. Each program is theme-based, but the nature of that theme is usually abstract and intuitive, much like the music that it presents. The focus is on “genre-refusing, zero BPM, hypnotropic and maximinimalist” recordings by a variety of artists, and includes not only musical compositions but also found and environmental recordings from various archives.
The result is a series of carefully considered sonic journeys that always include something difficult to find elsewhere. The show manages to accomplish this without raiding closets overflowing with cassette-only releases from the 1980s, nor does the program come off as a “difficult listening hour.” While noise is a relative term for most, this really isn’t a noisy show. There is a range of work presented here, and each broadcast manages to demonstrate the compelling, contemplative, and instructive facets of a genre that, while hard to define, is in fact a distinctive, recognizable, and evolving one.
Often included in the mix are otherwise unreleased :Zoviet*France: recordings, usually consisting of extracts from their live shows. For those of us who are out of range of the venues were such artists perform, this is a welcome addition. Since the mid-1990s, :Zoviet*France: has focused primarily on live performances (as well as commissions for dance and film soundtracks), thus most of their new work has been largely unavailable. The glimpses into the band’s live shows are some of the highlights of A Duck In A Tree.
The example of a live :Zoviet*France: performance is a useful one for describing the program as a whole. For decades, their work has reached beyond the simple fabrication and arrangement of unusual sounds or interesting loops. In their live, improvised performances, one is introduced to slowly-developing spaces that are inhabited by measured activities and instrumentations that suggest a well-defined syntax. Such work is a reflection of a genre moving past simplistic methods of random juxtaposition or music concrete. There is a genuine vocabulary to be learned here, for both player and listener. And as it has for the last 30+ years, :Zoviet*France: is leading the way—now both as producers and curators.
A Duck In A Tree is broadcast on Basic.FM on Saturdays at 22:00 GMT, then repeated on Sundays at 14:00 GMT and Tuesdays at 04:00 GMT. Each week’s program is archived on Mixcloud after the Tuesday broadcast and can be downloaded as a podcast from Podbean. The show is also available as a podcast via iTunes.
