SEMI SILENT

As a three-time freestyle wrestling champion (1989/91/93), Pavel Brăila knows that massage after a competition is essential for muscle recovery, reducing tension, and helping the body regain strength for the next challenge. Built as a fictional radio show, RADIO MASSAGE is addressing the growing interest for the alternative medicine and its representation in today's media. The piece is also inviting the auditors to question how radio translates the reality, how the senses are eluded from the broadcasts, and how the knowledge is given exclusively through speech. (SONIC SPORTS, 2024) (English translation available on the website)

I dove, completely at ease, into a book (Why We Swim, Bonnie Tsui, 2020) that promised to be like a neighborhood swimming pool, but which, breath by breath, took me on a journey around the world to the very ends of history, of exceptional bodies and minds, plunging me into the depths of the psyche and the exhilaration of the open sea. And it’s all true. I asked the swimmers in my life and discovered that they, too, carry, in the most natural way, the same joy of encountering water. (SONIC SPORTS, 2026) English translation of the script on the website.

THIS ISN'T ABOUT FOOTBALL by Paul Breazu (Romanian) An improvised football field in Traian Square in Timișoara serves as the backdrop for a neighborhood portrait. The friendly tournament organized by the Casa Jacob Toffler Association in the Fabric neighborhood has, for several years in a row, brought together locals and people from other parts of the city — neighbors, artists, young and old, Nepalese immigrants, a manele singer — for a few days in the fall. Football is just the excuse. The real stake is the visibility of a community under the pressure of gentrification, in a neighborhood where craft beer bars are beginning to replace corner stores, and luxury apartments are gradually pushing to the margins the people who were born and raised there. (SONIC SPORTS, 2026) (English translation on the website)

THE FLOW by Mihnea Chelariu. The flow is a mental state of total immersion and maximum concentration on an activity. At that moment, action and consciousness merge, time seems to pass in a distorted way, and the level of focus reaches its peak. The piece THE FLOW speaks of regaining this state upon returning to the ski slope, even though a few years back this seemed impossible due to serious health issues. (SONIC SPORTS, 2025)

BOX by V.Leac (Romanian) Everyone trains—all the amateurs of this sport—for a hypothetical match, for a scenario that everyone who trains imagines. We recorded the gym—the training ground—for these amateurs who will never compete. The idea of recording sports-themed sounds dates back to when I was thinking about the sports-themed anthology „Generația de aur” (the Golden Generation). The recordings are from three different locations, all of which had a specific starting point: the amateur training hall—one private and one “at the gym”—and a training hall for junior professionals, the state-run boxing hall Olimpia. (SONIC SPORTS, 2025)

IL PRESIDENTE by Manja Ristić. Manja Ristić tells the story of growing up in a sports family, with her famous water polo dad and Croatian freestyle swimming champion mom. In the overlapping narrative between two places – Belgrade and the small town of Korčula in the Southern Adriatic – the story tackles the golden times of Yugoslavian water polo, the community-built island’s club KPK, where her parents first met, and the only small-town club that won a major European championship, producing some of the most important players in the history of Yugoslavian water polo. It is the story of her father, the family, post-WWII Yugoslavia, her early childhood, the culture, and the society that vanished savagely with the outbreak of the ex-Yugoslav conflicts in the 1990s. The story is narrated by Manja, her son Luka, and British sound artist and radio producer Mark Vernon. (SONIC SPORTS, 2024)

TOTAL by Cristian Fierbințeanu (Romanian) is a sound work about the cultural, social and personal relevance of sports, now and in the past. School practice, competitions, tournaments and social phenomena, all come out of a subjective memory as a rapid succession of sequences in which sport remains the central element. "Total" starts as a pluri-vocal confession about childhood memories that haunt one's relationship with sport. It develops as a fast metamorphic polyphony of exhortations, criticisms and sanctions. In the end, it arrives at an oblique comparison about the relevance of contemporary art vs the impact of sport culture. Why is sport a metaphor for life? (SONIC SPORTS, 2024) (English translation available on the website)

vers pervers by BORȘ, May 2025 / Where did the cows come from? / This track/thing/piece opens a conversation with the 1946 famine in Moldova—a catastrophe often remembered in fragmented, contradictory ways. Some recall it as a famine caused by drought, others as a deliberate act of ethnic cleansing by the ussr. The narrative shifts depending on who you ask, but what remains is the silencing, distortion, absurdity of memory and the chaotic ways it performs. / The track incorporates audio samples from a discussion in Chișinău about the archival work of Larisa Turea, who gathered testimonies of those who lived through the famine. Her voice, central to this piece, carries the weight of remembrance. Yet, even within memory, the cracks of disinformation are visible. The story told here is of a child who survived because her grandfather was a kolkhoz guard, secretly taking milk from the cows at night. But the child, now grown, insists that the cows were ‘imported’ by the USSR—when, in reality, they had been stolen from her very neighbors. / "De unde s-au luat vacile?" (ro. Where did the cows come from?) she is asked. "Наверное из-за границы" (ru. Probably from abroad.) / This also speaks to the dangerous nostalgia surrounding the USSR, the myth that "a fost mai bine" (ro. it used to be better – referring to the USSR). Against this, I juxtapose samples from a 1962 Moldova-Film documentary, which paints Moldova (the soviet republic then) as a land of abundance, a place where "viile absorb cu lăcomie căldura soarelui" (ro. the vineyards greedily absorb the sun’s warmth) and people have copious access to food. The absurdity of this imagery—glorifying productivity and prosperity while erasing the famine—is a reminder of how history has been rewritten, how voices have been muted, how suffering has been reframed as progress shortly after this collective trauma. / This piece is not just about the past but about the present, about resisting the false and perverse memory still propagated through Russian disinformation today. The act of remembering, of unearthing silenced stories, is an act of healing. / Mădălina Ciocanu, un/commonly known as BORȘ (/bôrSH/), is a Moldovan sound artist, DJ, and researcher. Her practice explores Bessarabian relational animism, oral memory, and decolonial ontologies through folklore. She’s released both dance tracks (I’m Going to Chișinău) and sonic testimonies like 'vers pervers' (on the 1946 famine) and 'Leagăn' (with folklorist Natalia Țurcan). She leads the collective listening workshops Ciulește Urechile and co-hosts AICI Chișinău, a micro daytime dance party. Sometimes these explorations become conceptual installations (Simultan Festival, Au Gust Fest), other times — collective workshops (Porocity, Timișoara). / Concept, composition and production by Mădălina Ciocanu, mixing and mastering by Alexe Pupăzan.

THE FROGS OF VESUVIUS… as if the earth itself sang. Author: Sillyconductor, 2025. Last year, with the generous support of SEMI SILENT, Liminaria, and Tramandars, I spent nearly two weeks in residence exploring the landscapes surrounding Mount Vesuvius. I had been fascinated by volcanoes ever since I first visited Stromboli - Terra di Dio - a divine, destructive force, dominating the other Aeolian Islands yet seemingly still on the Wednesday stage of its creation. During my stay near Naples, I went in search of a hidden underground lake that my friendly guide Tommaso** had mentioned. I had to see it and record it with the hydrophones I always had with me. Along the way, I was “lucky” enough to record what appeared to be a full eruption of Vesuvius – an experience I survived unharmed and am now able to narrate with my very own voice*. // *Not a single moment of this 8-minute plus montage was captured by any sort of microphone but generated artificially through a series of failed AI prompts.
Unusual for someone drawn to field recording, I know – but every sound here is synthetic and hand picked out of other hundreds on account of its approximate aesthetics. Each sound is a 20 second anomaly, a side-effect of a machine that is continuously learning yet still clumsy with irony, facts, and physicality. That’s what intrigued me – the dualistic nature of these sounds. Lava mimics water, birds resemble frogs, and human voices – though emotive – speak convincing gibberish. The music is evocative, but hollow. Much like the underground volcanic lake itself, the entire piece feels like a myth assembled from unstable materials: church hymns, narrator voices, elemental noise - all imperfect imitations conjured from digital ether. I’m not interested in AI that faithfully reproduces the sound of chopping wood. I want to hear how it fails - and in failing, invents something strange and exciting. This Vesuvian eruption worthy of a Giulio Verne tale is one such result. // **Many thanks to Liminaria and Tramandars for their help and hospitality, for real. // The piece is created during a residency in San Martino Valle Caudina, Italy, hosted by Associazione Culturale Interzona & Liminaria, with the support of Tramandars, in the frame of SONIC FUTURE RESIDENCIES 2024. Co-financed by AFCN. // Sillyconductor is the artistic moniker of Cătălin Matei, a Romanian sound artist based in Bucharest. He is recognized for his work as a sound designer, composer, performer and educator, with a diverse portfolio that includes music for silent films, games, animations, fashion shows, theatre and dance performances. His works often feature self-built or modified instruments, field recordings, and improvisational techniques that push the boundaries of traditional music-making. His primary focus is sound and its relationship with science or mathematics, creating instruments or installations that simultaneously explore sound, technology, and the environment. In recent years, his attention has shifted to bio linguistic installations and the sonification of inaudible phenomena, from archaeological sites to jars of algae. // Composition and mixing by Sillyconductor for SEMI SILENT. Co-produced by Associazione Culturale Interzona

Murmuration of Crumbles. I dissolved it, I let it rot (Romanian) by Mădălina Ciocanu (MD), November 2025. // am dizolvat, am lăsat să putrezească. look, it's rotting! the myth, the foundation, the loop, the repeat, the on repeat, tot așa, tot-ș-aceeași, tot rot, autoritatea epistemică, exprimarea se screme. exprimere – to express, or rather squeeze out (of?). ne scremem. ne scremem să naștem murmurări noi. noi scremem noutăți express. ce mai nou? this is where we express in the crumbles and murmurations of crumbles. crumble ‘til you forget how not to. murmur ‘til you forget words, to world. apoi uită din nou… remember to forget all over in fragments, smaller… smaller… that we can’t measure any longer. shorter… shorter… that we no longer store and hoarder. liquid, back to liquid, then vapour again, always in flight, escaping the lines, the rise, the wise men. but who can? cine poate? cine merită? cine irită. frământări de limbă, firimituri. ții minte când am împins toată firimitura în claritate? am frământat-o... nu s-a lipit. dar am vestit că gata, trăim fără fărămitură (că făcea mizerie). (delete the crumbs) (delete hertory) (delete the mess). acum firimiturile, pixelii, distorsiunile, the crumbles, the murmurations are back (and front and sideways, they’ve never really been away, always allways). when you walk through timișoara, go to that building, or that one, where it says proudly in red – atenție, cade tencuiala – and press, first gently, with your index finger or thumb or key, while clenching your jaw, > then relax the jaw > and then push and feel the release of a crumbling wall. so fragile, so easy. now take this proven methodology, and crumble away. then (don’t) forget to clean up (delete the crumbs) (delete hertory) (delete the mess) // The piece is composed with recordings made during SONIC FUTURE RESIDENCIES organized by SEMI SILENT and hosted by Simultan Festival in Timișoara, October 2024. // Mădălina Ciocanu, un/commonly known as BORȘ (/bôrSH/), is a Moldovan sound artist, DJ, and researcher. Her practice explores Bessarabian relational animism, oral memory, and decolonial ontologies through folklore. She’s released both dance tracks (I’m Going to Chișinău) and sonic testimonies like ‘vers pervers’ (on the 1946 famine) and ‘Leagăn’ (with folklorist Natalia Țurcan). She leads the collective listening workshops Ciulește Urechile and co-hosts AICI Chișinău, a micro daytime dance party. Sometimes these explorations become conceptual installations (Simultan Festival, Au Gust Fest), other times — collective workshops (Porocity, Timișoara). // Recordings, composition and mixing by Mădălina Ciocanu for SEMI SILENT. Co-produced by Simultan.