Shortwave

Our first album, Shortwave, was released on November 28th 2024

Shortwave: A Sonic Archive of the World

Shortwave, Transistor’s first record, emerged from the quiet and isolation of the COVID-19 quarantine. With Jason and Orson working from home, the duo found themselves with unexpected time to reflect and create. As the world slowed down, the airwaves became a portal to something vast and interconnected. Jason’s fascination with radio and Orson’s love of experimental sound converged into a shared vision: an album inspired by the fleeting, transient beauty of radio transmissions.

The process began with an ambitious undertaking—recording radio stations from across the globe. Armed with software-defined radios, vintage receivers, and a plethora of online tools, they captured hours of transmissions: music, talk shows, political speeches, static, and even eerie moments of silence. Over several months, their library grew to over a thousand hours of raw material, ranging from bustling metropolitan broadcasts to faint, crackling signals from distant corners of the earth.

From this treasure trove, Shortwave took shape. Each track on the album is a story, a reinterpretation of the fragmented voices and sounds collected from the ether. Titles like Babel, Pt. 1 & Pt. 2 reflect the chaos and beauty of overlapping languages and cultures. Broken Chords deconstructs snippets of music into haunting melodies, while Slava weaves together fragments of Slavic radio broadcasts into a somber tribute to resilience. In Ulaanbaatar, Jason and Orson crafted an auditory postcard of Mongolia’s capital, blending traditional music snippets with the hum of distant transmissions. The enigmatic I Hear Voices from My Radio explores the haunting familiarity of disembodied voices breaking through static.

The duo approached the project with their signature blend of technological innovation and emotional depth. Jason meticulously sorted and cataloged recordings, developing custom software to manipulate the sounds, while Orson layered these elements with ethereal synths and ambient textures. The result is an album that feels like a journey through time and space, evoking the wonder of a world connected by invisible threads.

Shortwave is not merely an album; it is an auditory mosaic, a tribute to the human voices and sounds that populate the airwaves. In a time when isolation felt universal, Jason and Orson used the medium of radio to bridge distances and capture the essence of shared experience. The record invites listeners to pause, to tune in, and to marvel at the ephemeral beauty of sound—a reminder that even in isolation, we are never truly alone.

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