Anton Spice

My review of @sonicacts festival is in the latest issue of @thewiremagazine . It took place the weekend that the US and Israel began bombing Iran and with so much work implicitly and explicitly dealing with listening in the context of conflict, colonialism, and environmental injustice, it was often difficult to know where best to place ones attention. But at a time when many major European arts institutions are actively and inexplicably rejecting the political, this felt in itself significant.  Anyway, there was a lot to unpack and 500 words was never going to be enough, but I hope it gives a sense of what Sonic Acts is up to for those who weren't there.

On May 12th at the @devonojas Listening Room, @180.studios , @anton.spice presents Sonic Landscapes — an immersive session exploring representations of landscape, culture and memory through sound. Moving from field recordings to ambient music, and from diverse geographies to literary fictions, the evening unfolds as a journey through place and perception. #180Studios #180TheStrand #ListeningRoom #DevonOjas #DevonTurnbull

The latest Through Sounds interview is with Maja Zećo. A sound and performance artist and researcher interested in embodied sound, @maja_zeco draws on her experience of the Bosnian War to explore the dreadful sonics of military drones. Interested in how sound shapes memory and experiences of place, her work also deals with community tensions arising from the green energy transition, focussed specifically on Aberdeen, where she now lives. As you can imagine this was a really powerful and moving conversation, which I hope comes across in the published text. Maja's work is both sensitive and incredibly robust, asking difficult questions about the relationship between embodied experiences of sound and ways in which we might extend empathy in increasingly hostile contexts. I'm really grateful to her for sharing her thoughts so openly and happy to have had the opportunity to get to know her and her work in more depth over the last few years. We first conducted the interview in early 2025, but following Maja's recent workshop at LSE which I was invited to attend, looking ahead to her forthcoming exhibition at @peacockandtheworm in Aberdeen, and in the light of the US and Israel’s wars on Iran and Lebanon - enacted in part through the brutal and detached use of drones - much of what we discussed has taken on a new urgency. You can read the whole interview via the link in my bio. Image credits: Slide 3. Defend & Protect, 2024 (credit: Boris Cvjetanovic) Slide 5. Defend & Protect, 2024 (credit: Boris Cvjetanovic) Slide 7. Silencer, (credit: Matt Cawrey)

Is there anything more painfully British than talking to the Poet Laureate about the weather? New work for @electronicsoundmag profiling @lyrband - the trio of Simon Armitage, Patrick J. Pearson and Richard Walters - whose latest album Dark Sky Reservation on @realworldrec finds hope and connection in the strange shadows, soggy landscapes and suburban Specsavers of contemporary Britain. "Following its lyrical byways, ‘Dark Sky Reservation’ does feel at times like a charmed tour through the hollowed high streets and brownfield borderlands of this strange isle. There’s beauty here, but also sadness. It reminds me of Patrick Keiller’s Robinson films – a psychogeography in sound, whose leftfield pastoralism pushes back against our uneasy times and the suspicion that the temperature is just too warm. What are the redeeming stories of this weird new Britain, running a nativist fever, unsure of friend or foe?"

Introducing our new client Anton Spice! His work examines the cultural and political potential of listening, revealing new perspectives on climate change and ecological crisis. Expansive in scope yet grounded in sensory detail, his debut THE SONIC LANDSCAPE reveals the hidden histories and sonic futures of our time — and asks whether listening more deeply can change the way we think about the world around us. After lots of interest at LBF, THE SONIC LANDSCAPE will be on submission soon. Photo: @robin_silas

How does sound move differently in vertical space and what happens when we begin to think about architecture, landscape and the embedded histories they contain, in less horizontal terms? It's only taken 6 months, but Through Sounds is back with @massiftrophies aka BJ Nilsen in conversation about his new work Scalar Towers for @sonicacts Link in bio! Photos 1-3: Agata Stoinska

Back at @micro__scope this Sunday evening in conversation with @cameron_randall_ to talk about his work Hyper Noise Crystal Image, field recording, machine learning and all sorts of self-organising tangents. Very limited tickets via link in stories.

It was a pleasure to take part in the Sensing Transition: Arts Methodologies and the Politics of Energy Futures workshop at @londonschoolofeconomics last week hosted by @maja_zeco , Gisa Weszkalnys and Rachel Grant. Thank you for inviting me to ramble on about my work for a few minutes alongside lovely people @alisaoleva @levackdrever and Scott Herrett and do some live thinking about how sound and listening informs my writing practice. It was also an opportunity to dig out some of these photos from a trip to Storheia in Norway a few years ago. Storheia is one of Europe's largest on-shore windfarms and the site of a long-running dispute between Sámi reindeer herders and the Norwegian government. The construction of the site was deemed to violate Sámi rights to cultural practice by the supreme court in 2021, and although certain aspects have been legally resolved, it remains an example of how state energy futures replicate colonial relations under the guise of the green transition. I spent a few hours wandering around among the turbines in the pouring rain. The visibility was so poor I was guided only by the whirring, dizzying sound of the turbine blades, which would suddenly loom large through the mist. It was a disorientating and unsettling experience. A site of conflict and power in the most literal sense, up in the clouds, pulling wind out of the sky, humming with intent. One quote I kept coming back to when preparing my talk last week was this one from Pauline Oliveros: “Quantum listening is listening to more than one reality simultaneously.” This feels as necessary as it is difficult, and something I aspire to in my own writing.

I spent most of the winter reading reading Halldór Laxness's 600-page Icelandic epic Independent People, and wrote about it for Caught by the River's series of end-of-year reflections. Predictably, bells and ice cores also feature, alongside quite a lot of bad maths. Perfect, really, for the most depressing day of the year. Link in bio to read via @caughtbytheriver cc: @tetz.pretz @tessemckenzie

Any opportunity to talk about the decay of physical media as a metaphor for change and loss... In conversation with artist and musician @raedyassinstudio for @ibraazlondon , where Yassin performed his Phantom Orchestra work in 2025 - a piece for 12 turntables and 42 dubplates of solo performers from across Berlin's experimental and improvised music scene. Thank you to @alex_c_fletcher for the commission. And if you don't know it, check out Ibraaz's new space in London for art and culture from the Global Majority. Some fantastic programming coming up.

I’m so happy to announce that, as the cherry on top to close my first european tour, on the 18th I’ll be djing B2B with my dear friend @anton.spice at @brilliant_cnrs !!!! I feel honoured! Thank you so much Anton for the invitation and thank you so so much @darren.shaddick for making such a great flyer! Hope to see you there for some Brazilian pills💘

"Behind the sky-blue door of a former cloister at the edge of a small town 150 kilometers outside Bogotá is an archive like no other. Forty-two rolling metal cabinets of mammals. Drawers of tanagers and tinamous. Buckets of turtles, barrels of snakes. Vitrines of individually tagged butterflies, beetles, and bees. The skin of an anteater. The skull of a tapir. A condor on a stick. One of Colombia’s foremost biological research centers, the Humboldt Institute in Villa de Leyva is also home to the Colección de Sonidos Ambientales, or Collection of Environmental Sounds, the largest archive of its kind in Latin America. Here, the fleeting melodies of endemic birds, rhythmic frog choruses, and forest soundscapes are kept safe among the stuffed and embalmed remains of the animals that made them." In early 2024, I spent a day visiting the collection to learn how the biologists use sound to map biodiversity loss, deforestation and preserve what they call "acoustic fossils" of Colombia's rapidly changing environments. Although the research will contribute to a longer project I am working on, I was able to publish a snapshot of this magical place in @broccoli_mag 's new music publication Heartbeat, which is out now and really worth checking out, not least because it is one of the few publications that explore sound and music side-by-side. Thank you to Eliana Barona-Cortes and Daniela Martínez-Medina for showing me around and making me feel so welcome, and Stephanie Madewell at Heartbeat for the commission.