Premiere: Campbell Irvine – Past and Future is the Same Difference

Music

Multi-disciplinary artist Campbell Irvine explores the concept of broadcast encryption.

The radio hissed and buzzed in the corner, blurting out indecipherable snippets of information which briefly captured the attention of those lining the walls of the room. What they were listening out for hadn’t yet been identified, they’d had little to no news for days now that some had began to give up on hearing anything. But the transmissions would continue to broadcast, it was their only connection to the outside world, their only glimmer of hope amongst the darkness.

On his latest release, ‘Baptism in the Cathedral of Commerce’, multi-disciplinary artist Campbell Irvine marries music, visual and text to explore the concept of broadcast encryption. Taking the form of speculative fiction, the work welcomes listeners to enter an alternate Cold War scenario through a Yugoslav lens, namely nuclear bunkers, shortwave radio and numbers stations. Alongside the music, composed and produced by Irvine, collaborators including Marta Sundac, Benjamin Gredeson and longtime creative partner Stefanie Parnow, helped to shape it into a boundary-blurring media project.