Colliding Lines present live sessions, cross-genre collaborations and left-field recordings drawn from the London, UK and international experimental scenes; a long-form love letter to recorded audio as soundtrack, as sound art and as storyteller.

The programme airs on Resonance Extra on the third Thursday of every month. You can find backdated episodes collected on their website here, or follow them on Mixcloud and Soundcloud.

Episodes

Colliding Lines #6 – Rita Says, Reuben Kyriakides

This month we spend two hours with two artists – Rita Says, who with her Orchestra revives and reclaims 20th century experimental classics in the spirit of their modern punk equivalents; and Reuben Kyriakides, elusive composer-producer whose diverse portfolio includes dance scores, hip-hop, alternatively tuned piano, and at least one sound installation about Billy Elliot.

Colliding Lines #5 – Origin Stories

This month takes the theme of beginnings or origins – artists and works that begin at home, in the family, or in birth. Through field recordings and acoustic drones Broads & Milly Hirst score the landscapes and history of their native Norfolk; Gaze is Ghost and poet Nikki Marrone debut new collaborations and discuss motherhood and creativity; and we welcome Alexander Carson performing in session live from his living room. Finally, longtime CL collaborator Derek Yau debuts his first solo record, ‘May’, out June 25th.

Colliding Lines #4 – (dis)Embodied

In this episode, non-physical spaces, dreams as performance, and the body as instrument, object and obstacle. Featuring new music and interviews from Lou Barnell, sound & poetry collective Catching Shadows, and art-pop band MAW. Writer Abi Palmer reads from her recent book ‘Sanatorium’, released through Penned in the Margins. Wes Freeman-Smith and Martin Clarke host.

Colliding Lines #3 – Apocalypse

This month, we visit live literature experiment ‘Shadowplay’ – the story of a fictional global pandemic cancelled by a real global pandemic. Looking at the many projects frustrated, complicated and transformed by lockdown, we’ll be taking damage reports from artists across Europe and exploring hopes for a better future. Debuting new music from Amore Meow, Lost Harbours and KON, and Jacob and Reuben Kyriakides.

Colliding Lines #2 – Reanimation: Visible Music

This episode features performances from our live score series, re-imagining the visual music of 1920s Dada, where abstract painters explored the new medium of cinema through rhythm, geometry and colour. Interviews and new music from Bell Lungs, Merlin Nova and Pascal Coleman, and Lola de la Mata.

Colliding Lines #1 – Reanimation: Labyrinth

Live Sessions and Unusual Recording Spaces

Colliding Lines has never confined itself to radio studios. Since the earliest editions, the programme has built its archive from live recordings made in bedrooms, disused industrial units, church crypts and at least one narrowboat on the Regent’s Canal. The editorial preference is for acoustic honesty: room tone, traffic bleed and the creak of a piano stool are treated as part of the performance rather than flaws to be removed. This approach gives each session a particular sense of place, often documented in the accompanying online notes.

Regular recording residencies have been held in partnership with venues such as Iklectik in Waterloo and Hundred Years Gallery in Hoxton, where artists are invited to develop site-specific sets over a single afternoon. A recent session with vocalist and tape manipulator Chlöe March was captured in a former bank vault beneath the Strand, with the natural reverb of the space shaping an otherwise unaccompanied set of close-harmony drones. Similarly, the duo Far Rainbow recorded in an empty East London synagogue, allowing the building’s long decay time to colour their bowed guitar and shruti box improvisations.

Each live session is engineered by a rotating pool of collaborators, many of whom also contribute field recordings under their own names. The resulting audio is mastered lightly, without loudness normalisation, preserving the dynamic range of quieter acoustic gestures.

Cross-Genre Pairings and Commissioned Collaborations

A defining feature of Colliding Lines is the deliberate collision of idioms. Rather than simply sequencing tracks, the programme often commissions short-term collaborations between artists who have never worked together. In one edition, Northumbrian smallpiper and electronic improviser Martin Clarke was paired with London-based modular synthesist Yoni Silver, resulting in a half-hour piece that moved between drone-based folk melody and unstable rhythmic noise. Another pairing brought sound poet and performer Hannah Silva together with turntablist Mariam Rezaei for a live cut-up of found text and manipulated records.

These commissions are usually documented in two forms: the broadcast edit and a longer, unedited version released through the Colliding Lines online store. The label side of the operation has issued a growing number of lathe-cut singles and limited cassettes drawn directly from these sessions, including a split release between violinist Aby Vulliamy and tape-loop artist Tom Bench. For listeners, the pairing notes on each episode page explain how the match was arranged and what parameters the artists set for themselves.

Field Recording and the Sound of Place

Outside the studio, the programme has developed a strong line in phonography. Many editions begin with a sound postcard: an unedited two- or three-minute recording sent in by a contributor, accompanied only by a location and a time of day. These have included dawn chorus recordings from the Lee Valley, hydrophone captures from beneath Deptford Creek, and the electromagnetic hum of a decommissioned signal box near Clapham Junction. The sound postcard serves as a palate cleanser between longer works and, over time, has accumulated into a separate archive of London and regional acoustic ecologies.

The programme also commissions longer field-based compositions. In 2023, Colliding Lines aired “Tide Line”, a forty-minute piece by sound artist and geographer Emma Welton, built entirely from recordings made at the eroding cliffs of Happisburgh on the Norfolk coast. Each segment of the piece is indexed to a specific stretch of coastline, with erosion events, wave energy and bird activity layered into a slow-motion narrative. A companion essay on the programme’s website explains the recording methods, including contact microphones buried at the cliff edge and binaural heads placed inside a disused coastguard lookout.

These field recording editions deliberately blur the boundary between documentary and music. The curatorial note for “Tide Line” described the work as “a landscape listening back to itself”, and that phrase has become a useful shorthand for the strand as a whole.

Archive, Community and How to Take Part

Every episode is archived as a continuous two-hour stream on the Colliding Lines website, with timestamps linking individual works to their creators. The archive is deliberately not chopped into standalone tracks: the programme retains the flow of the original broadcast, including presenter links, interstitial silences and the occasional off-mic conversation. This decision reflects a belief that radio, like live performance, is about sequence and duration as much as individual pieces.

Colliding Lines operates an open call for audio submissions, with no preference for particular genres or levels of experience. Submissions can be sent via the website, and the organisers regularly invite first-time contributors to record a short introduction in their own voice. Recent open calls have focused on themes such as “night work”, “domestic machinery” and “music for empty rooms”. Selected work is broadcast alongside established artists, and the programme maintains a commitment to paying a small fee for every commissioned collaboration or sound postcard used.

A physical listening archive is also maintained at the Resonance Extra office, where visitors can browse a shelf of CD-Rs, cassettes and zines sent in by contributors from around the world. At live events, this shelf travels as a pop-up library, and attendees are encouraged to borrow or add to it.

The first episode in a series of recorded performances from our live score series, re-imagining scores for obscure and iconic animations. Featuring interviews with saxophonist and sound recordist Martin Clarke, acclaimed vocal artist Ingrid Plum, and violist / game designer Mother Ivy (Nick Murray).