Welcome to the deep darkness...

As the number of episode downloads passes 5000, welcome to new wanderers through the Akiha Den Den airwaves - and here’s a reminder of the cast and creators:

M R Cuttings…..Ian McDiarmid

Peri…..Joy McAvoy

Silph…..Sheila Reid

Bullhook…..Peter Kelly

Glender…..Ewan Petrie

His Gills…..Cameron Mowat

Macrell…..Wendy Rae Fowler

Gabriel…..Mark Little

Sound Design & Music…..Simon James

Writer & Director…..Neil Cargill

Created independently in North East Scotland with support from Aberdeen Performing Arts

and Creative Scotland.

In 5 Movements

A track that is hidden away on the Bonus CD that comes with the Akiha Den Den Soundtrack, which coincidentally is still available to buy on Castles in Space Records.  

Akiha Den Den soundtrack album pre-order

This vinyl and CD package collects electronic music created for an abandoned space: the crumbling amusement park at the centre of Akiha Den Den.

Sleeve design by Nick Taylor

Radio interference, snatches of intercepted broadcasts, codes, tones, signals and other haunting sounds from the wireless feature heavily alongside the soundtrack conjured up on an array of vintage, unfathomable synthesisers including the Buchla 200e Electric Music Box and the EMS VCS3. Occasionally the voices of Akiha Den Den's inhabitants and M.R Cuttings burn through the white noise offering a glimpse of their tangled patchbay like story. 

Released on a specially requested opaque clear vinyl LP, the physical package also includes a redacted Akiha Den Den booklet (all artwork designed by Nick Taylor) and a beautiful bonus CD filled with over 70 minutes of Buchla Modular, EMS, drones, dramatics, cassette 4 track abuse and noise from the Akiha Den Den radio series. 

Order here

The Sound of Story - a write up

Just discovered this thorough and detailed write up of The Sound of Story event which we took part in last year. Under the title Sound Tradition and experimentation in Brighton, Kevin Hilton shares his experience on the day.

Read it here. 

Rusting souls

Unidentified signals intercepted by Macrell – maybe from deep inside the wires, the valves, the rusted souls of Akiha's own arcade games?

Neil and Simon at The Sound of Story

Discussing the important part sound and music play in the story of Akiha Den Den, and why sound needn't be relegated to a supporting role in radio, at the inspiring The Sound of Story event held in Brighton last week. 

Photo by Curtis James

Episode 6 Trailer

Episode 6, the final part of series 1, is coming on Thursday......... Get it at the usual places....

Their words have been reaching you – but what about the voices that have reached them? Incoming. Peri is devastated when she discovers the truth. 

Electronic Sound Magazine - Radiophonics

“Truly inventive and exploratory sound” - Electronic Sound Magazine 
We were delighted to discover Akiha is the focus of a fascinating article in Electronic Sound magazine by renowned composer and sound artist Robin Rimbaud (aka Scanner). In an appreciation of experimental radiophonics that discusses everyone from Brian Eno, Holger Czukay and John Cage to Samuel Beckett, he notes that in Akiha “...refreshingly, the sound design takes equal billing with the voice, frequently submerging and corroding the voices beyond all recognition, as if burning the meaning of the words in a sonic inferno.” It's hugely rewarding that Scanner has placed the series in the context of experimental sound and words – Akiha's true origins – and that this has uncovered “fresh possibilities for storytelling... They offer up an immersive world for the listeners to lose themselves in a most alluring fashion. Free of the screen, let your ears roam around this imaginary world and let the sound take you into a lost world of fact and fiction, balancing on the borderlands of illusion and reality.” 
electronicsound.co.uk