Lowlines

A quick update after quite a long pause. Lately I’ve been:1.⁠ ⁠Noodling with some new episodes! They might be shorter and scrappier but they’ll keep taking you to more low-down places and the people who live there2.⁠ ⁠Imagining a physical version of Lowlines - a place to get low in. As I explore this - and all things related re. body, people, and place - I’ve been writing about it on my Substack under the title of GET LOW. Find it at: lowlines.substack.com3.⁠ ⁠Getting juiced about joining the Hub & Spoke Audio Collective! They are a collective of independent audio makers, all under the umbrella of a shared love of place and the hyperlocal. I've picked out a show from the Hub & Spoke stable that I thought might flick your switches. It's called ‘Ode to Village Life’ from Rumble Strip - and I love how it captures the essence of place in the most everyday kind of ways. What makes a place feel like a place is so often made up of such ordinary elements that we might not always think about, but if removed, the whole scaffolding of that place can shift.

Leaving the jungle, leaving the Americas, heading home! After OD-ing on mould and the thick, viscose brew - as well as more ‘place’ than I knew what to do with at times - the sweet relief of a plump pillow, seasoned food and a hot bath soon gives way to this eerie sense of…mutedness. All I can hear is white noise - and what do you do about that when you realise that most of your life is soundtracked by this dull hum?In Episode 7, the final part of this first series of Lowlines, we move back into the familiar high-pitched world, prepare to re-adjust - and consider how to land back into it differently.CreditsProduced by Lucia Scazzocchio of Social Broadcasts, Executive-Produced by Lina Prestwood of Scenery Studios, Mixing & Mastering: Jobina TinnemansMusic by Hannah Marshall and icoros sung by Maestra Estela, Maestra Yaca, Maestro Nestor and Maestro DanielEpilogue Production and Sound Design by Lina PrestwoodTo go deeper into this episode and the rest of the series - and to sign up to the Lowlines newsletter - head to low-lines.com

Two weeks at a plant medicine centre in the Peruvian Amazon - I thought this would be a good thorough deep dive and that I might get wiser and closer to the plants, but I soon discover that two weeks is nothing and that I know nothing. Everything at Aya Madre is a challenge to what you think you understand and who you think you are. An assault on the senses, a take-down of the ego, an all-out reckoning with not even the release of a firm conclusion.This final episode of the first season of Lowlines is the anti-conclusion episode. Give it up to the twisting, knotted vines and the soaring, deafening jungle chorus. Just go with it. I tried to…!CreditsFeaturing the voices of Maestra Estela, Maestra Yaca, Maestro Nestor and Maestro Daniel of Aya Madre and Jordan McIntosh, the wise apprenticeProduced by Lucia Scazzocchio of Social Broadcasts, Executive-Produced by Lina Prestwood of Scenery Studios, Mixing & Mastering: Jobina TinnemansMusic by Hannah Marshall and icoros sung by Maestra Estela, Maestra Yaca, Maestro Nestor and Maestro DanielTo go deeper into this episode head to low-lines.com

Working with the land, tuning into the pulse of place - the Aztecs knew what was up. They were engineering geniuses who worked with the lake around which Tenochtitlan (ancient Mexico City) was built to create a rich permaculture system - chinampas - fringed by canals and waterways. When the Spanish landed and took over they didn’t get it. They said ‘drain that lake’, make this place make sense - and the city has been sinking at a terrifying rate ever since. Today, as Mexico City slides lower, the remaining chinampas endure, perfectly designed to function in this landscape - and now being carried forward by some tuned in farmers.In Episode 5, we’re following these ancient canalways to visit Arca Tierra down in Xochimilco - brilliant project, brilliant vision - the future, and the past all in one big juicy sponge of rich volcanic soil.CreditsFeaturing the voices of Lucio Usobiaga and Victor Gamboa at Arca Tierra, Dani Moreno and Santiago Muñoz of Maiz Ajo, and Leonel, Gamaliel and Noé on whose boats and chinampas this episode cruises through. Extra field recordings: Emilio Quiñones , San ChagoProduced by Lucia Scazzocchio of Social Broadcasts, Executive-Produced by Lina Prestwood of Scenery Studios, Mixing & Mastering: Jobina Tinnemans. Extra field recordings: Emilio Quiñones, San Chago on Freesound. Music by Hannah Marshall To go deeper into this episode head to low-lines.com

I’m looking for a desert woman, someone who is totally in tune with this powerful landscape and who might help me tune into its great vastness a little bit more. I hear in a Tucson cafe that Arivaca is ground zero for such women. I head down there - almost all the way to the border - and start asking around town for a desert woman. Who I end up spending time with is a long way from what I had imagined but who fills me with all kinds of ideas about what it is to belong to a place, to know it - and for it to know you.In Episode 4 we follow the lowlines to the La Gitana bar in Arivaca, the brittle dirt of a huntress’s land, discover an abandoned halfway house, a coven of new wave desert women in a secret bar at the back of a store - and then gravitate further down to the border to get up close with The Wall.CreditsFeaturing the voices of Samantha Moore, the Tumbleweed Cafe owners, the helpful folk at the Arivaca general store, to everyone in La Gitana, the coven of women at the Hilltop bar at the back of the Sasabe Store & Wholesale Mesquite Firewood, as well as the odd passer-by…Produced by Lucia Scazzocchio of Social Broadcasts, Executive-Produced by Lina Prestwood of Scenery Studios, Mixing & Mastering: Jobina TinnemansMusic by Hannah Marshall To go deeper into this episode head to low-lines.com