CrossTalk, GRIP & more Noods business
From day-long talk programmes to inventive visual collabs for urgent new talent, Bristol’s beloved radio station are busy beyond broadcasting.
It’s been quite the marvel to watch Noods grow in the past few years. Sludging its way out of the Bristol undergrowth with the city’s well-documented DIY spirit, the online radio station capitalised on the pool of local talent which gave it a voice and thought smartly about how to build something meaningful. As we drown in a sea of online streams, being a simple radio station just isn’t enough.
If you need evidence of their intentions, look at their LEVELS arm, which is focused on providing opportunities for young, creative people from across a social spectrum. As they quote from the Policy and Evidence Centre on their own website, “Only 16% of people in creative jobs are from working-class backgrounds.” To that end, they’ve just announced CrossTalk, a day-long programme of talks and workshops featuring representatives of the on-point, Black-run No Signal Radio, music video director and all-round creative powerhouse Ashleigh Jadee and Portishead / Beak / Invada Records industry veteran (not to mention incredible producer and grumpy Twitter icon) Geoff Barrow. Multidisciplinary arts producer Emma Blake Morsi will be hosting, while the idea for the event, due to take place March 26 at the Arnolfini in Bristol, was developed by Izzy Cross, one of the young people Noods are working with in LEVELS.
CrossTalk comes in the wake of a number of other endeavours Noods have been messing with from their newly-established home in Mickey Zoggs, the pub-café which houses the radio studio as well as many a gnarly session for Bristol’s independent music community. They just released a frankly mind-melting two-part visual collaboration with Double Vision Studios called GRIP, which takes an inventive approach to capturing two of the city’s most exciting young MCs throwing down one-take sessions. On one side is Grove, who delivers a version of ‘Bloodsucka’ from their devastating SPICE EP on Bokeh Versions, and on the other is GUTTR with a new joint entitled ‘My B’s Emo’. [editors note: Out to anyone in Bristol who remembers the Slykea NYE party we threw in the social club you see GUTTR stalking around.]
Astounding talent abounds, from the visuals to the MCs and onwards, and you can find out more about Grove and GUTTR from their respective interviews with Ishmael Soriano on the Noods site.
For the keen-eyed, dj_2button and Babyschön will be playing a low-key “secret bunker” Noods-run show somewhere in Bristol on March 12 – tickets here and it might well be pointing to a seriously hot new release dropping in the near future.
This is just coming in the wake of the Noods fifth anniversary compilation NOOD5 with city luminaries like Ossia, Pessimist, Katatonic Silentio and Valesuchi splattered across a slab of wax. There’s been a lot of mixtapes too, from Lena Wilikens facing down The Pheasantry Society to a blistering trilogy from jungle evangelists Anina & Guest, and a truckload of merch. You can already lose yourself down a rabbit hole trying to get a handle on everything Noods have done so far, and as the endeavours take on a deeper, more professional tone aimed at uplifting the young and marginalised, it feels like things are only going to get more exciting.
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