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SMASHED! BLOCKED!

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Smashed! Blocked!

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SMASHED! BLOCKED! is one of several recurring campus radio programs I have hosted on Local 107.3FM, running over the course of two series between 2010 and 2015.* It was syndicated through the National Campus/Community Radio Association and the A-Infos Radio Project, and voted Best Radio Program numerous times in Best Of Saint John Music polls at this time. While I would like to think that this vote was based on the show’s heady 2-hour late-night stew-scape of weird bleak musics - from punk and psychedelia to noise and free jazz, and all possible tendrils thereof - the show was patently unpopulist by design. As such, I’m convinced this no less appreciated recognition was truthfully the result of its enthusiastic promotion. I think I loved creating these images as much as I did the program itself.

One of the features of Facebook’s salad days circa 2010-11 was allowance of the long tall profile pic, and once I settled on my weekly 1:5 canvas, this kind of aspect ratio would go on to retain a certain excitement for me (I still prefer legal posters over tabloid, often slimming tabloid designs down and inch or two when trimming allows). The majority of these images come from pulp crime and science fiction novels, among other sources, while the shape allowed dramatic indulgence in cropping and typesetting. It sounds odd to say, but between the joy of selecting the music played and creating the accompanying images, these SMASHED! BLOCKED! tiles remain one of my proudest, if most niche, bodies of work.

*Images from Series 1 (2010-11). Linked audio from Series II (2014-15). Respect to UK technicolour mods John’s Children (featuring a young Marc Bolan) for the program name.