Physical Distancing Discs – Series Two

Between June 2021 and 2023 I recorded mixtapes for friends which were sent to them in the post. Recordings of these tapes were also broadcast on Slack’s radio for a monthly show called Physical Distancing Discs. You can listen to these mixtapes here.

After a hiatus, I’ve started a new series of the show. This time, instead of recording tapes at home, I have been inviting people to join me in the studio so we can play tracks to each other, kind of like a collaborative mixtape.

Before we went into the studio, my guests and I sent each other questions to help us get to know each other a little better and select tracks to play.

The title of each show is decided between myself and my guest during the show.

Slack’s uses Instagram to promote the station’s schedule and I try to keep up on my own account, which you can find here.

#1 – Charlie Don’t Surf (September 2024)

For the first show of series two, I was in the studio on my own. The show was inspired by my experience of promoting gigs in Cambridge from the early to late 2000s, under the name Charlie Don’t Surf. The records I played on this show were people who had performed at these gigs and artists who I played with at other people’s shows, like Bad Timing in Cambridge and Uncollected in Norwich.

I had a great time recording this show, despite many mishaps and technical errors, including not having the next record cued up, turning the mic off when trying to talk, reading a script off my phone, doing this too fast and missing out sections of it while trying to concentrate on other things, along with some bad mixing. Sadly I wasn’t able to handle this with the charismatic charm that John Peel was able to. But it was a learning experience – one that I enjoyed a lot, and I hope you do too.

I don’t feel that I was able to capture what Charlie Don’t Surf was and what it meant to me. This means I’ll have to do more shows about it in the future and invite other people who were involved in the night to contribute to these shows – watch this space.

Tracklist

AFX – Children Talking

Global Goon – Business Man

Cylob – Smash Up The Pram

Bogdan Raczynski – Iai

Miami Beat Alliance – Shitting In The Mix (Track 1)

Miami Beat Alliance – Shitting In The Mix (Track 2)

Chav & Dave – Macked Out (It’s My Night To Fight Mix)

Pete UM – Africa Is A Fridge

Ebola – Jungle Warfare

DJ Scotch Egg – Scotch Forest

Shitmat – Kiss The Spanner And Call Me Charlie

The Fall – No Xmas For John Quays

Ovuca – Meng

Ovuca – Kissa

Doormouse – Skelechairs (Venetian Snares Remix)

Kid Spatula – Hard Love

Radioactiveman – Uranium

#2 – If you saw someone stealing food; no you didn’t w. Kat Bevan (October 2024)

For this episode, I was joined by my first guest, Kat Bevan. We met each other in 2019 when Kat came to a workshop I was running about Universal Basic Income. From that first encounter, it was clear that we shared similar politics and kept in contact.

In 2023 she invited me onto her podcast All Work No Play to discuss my PhD thesis which explores the potential of participatory arts practice to challenge complex societal problems and imagine alternative futures. In the interviewed we talked about Bill Drummond’s artwork quite a bit, so I will always musically associate her with the KLF, hence why I started the show with Fuck the Millienium by 2K. 

The title of the show, a well known anarchist slogan, was taken from a sticker we saw in the Slack’s studio during the recording.

Tracklist

Artist – Track title [selected by]

2K – Fuck the millennium [Toby]

Bomb The Bass – Beat Dis [Toby]

Joshua Idehen – Your Mum Does the Washing [Kat]

Gang of Four – To Hell With Poverty [Kat]

The fall – Fit and Working Again (live) [Toby]

Marcel Wave – Discount Centre [Toby]

Dead Kennedys – Soup is good food [Kat]

Chumbawamba – I Wish That They’d Sack Me [Kat]

Frau – Pull the Plug! [Toby]

Thank – Woke Frasier [Toby]

Buffet Lunch Ft Me Lost Me – Worth (Confirmed) [Kat]

Bjork – There’s More to Life Than This [Kat]

Leila – Feeling [Toby]

Manic Street Preachers – Umbrella [Toby]

The Cramps – Bikini Girls with Machine Guns [Kat]

Apostille – Saturday Night, Still Breathing [Toby]

·

#3 You could do better, but no-one can prove it – Nick Malyan (November 2024)

This month I was joined by Nick Malyan. We first met in Durham when he was one of the directors of Empty Shop where I had my first exhibition after finishing my MA at Sunderland University. There were only 3 CDs in the building during the install of the show. The one which got played the most was Hot Potatoes: The Best of Devo. 

From there we became close friends and worked on several art projects together. One of which was a fictional band that only played covers of other people’s songs, including Mongoloid by Devo which is why I started the show with that song. 

The title of the show is taken from a lyric in the Thank song I played for Nick. We both felt that this line summed up perfectly the ethos of the band we played in together. 

Over the course of the show we took it in turn to play tracks to each other while reminiscing on our friendship over the years and Nick’s increasingly nostalgic relationship to music, as work and other commitments take up so much of his time. 

Track list

Artist – Track Title [Selected by]

Devo – Mongoloid [Toby]

Big Blood – Never ending nightmare [Toby]

Nick Raistrick – Zetland House [Toby]

The Fall – Victoria [Nick]

Aphex Twin – Windowlicker [Nick]

Thank – Do it badly [Toby]

Nape Neck –  No Platforming [Toby]

Annie Rossi – Ecology [Nick]

Sun City Girls – Gum Arabic [Nick]

The Amps –  Tip City [Nick]

Marcel Wave – Great British High St [Toby]

The Fall – Clasp Hands (Peel Session) [Toby]

Hüsker Dü – Statues [Nick]

The Slugs – I Feel Sick [Toby]

Perfect Chicken – Trauma (live) [Toby]

Pharoah Sanders – Duo [Nick]

Yol – The Best Art [Toby]

Research Reactor Corporation – Kiss Army President [Toby]

Nation of Ulysses – Aspirin Kid [Nick]