Keep It Locked

2025
Sound installation

Materials: Archival cassette audio, FM radio receiver, Eurorack modular system.

Keep It Locked brings together an archived pirate radio broadcast recorded by the artist in London in 1996 with live FM radio received in Berlin almost thirty years later. Its title comes from the phrase “keep it locked”, used on air despite the instability of the signal.

The two transmissions are layered in real time, bringing different moments, places and technologies into the same space. The work explores a tension inherent in radio: its ability to connect across distance while remaining subject to regulation, monitoring and control, and always vulnerable to interference and loss.

00:00

Audio excerpt documenting one iteration of the live installation.

Installation

The work is conceived as a continuously running live system. The original cassette is played through a compact Eurorack system, where it is sampled and layered with live FM radio received in the exhibition space. The two signals are processed together in real time, allowing the composition to shift with the broadcasts, interference and signal conditions encountered at that moment.

The cassette player and modular system remain visible, making the process of transmission and transformation part of the installation.

Fig. 1. Live system combining archival cassette and FM radio within the installation.

Archive

The source recording was made during a live pirate radio broadcast in London in 1996 and survives on cassette. Photographs from the same period place the recording within the informal spaces and technologies through which pirate radio operated.

Tape noise, signal loss and imperfections in the original recording remain audible within the installation rather than being restored or removed.