My eldest daughter Isla and I have been making a quarterly radio show called the Quiet Burrow since the start of last year. Isla is 8 years old and enjoys art, nature and learning so these shows are a chance for us to get creative together, always based loosely around Ambient music.

It's been a while since our last show in the summer and Isla says at the beginning of the show, we've been pretty busy! But also, we had various ideas for this seventh show and these kept changing - we find that once we nail down the basis for a show, it comes together quite organically and that's what happened with this seventh edition! After much debate, we came up with the theme of 'random' and came up with some methods to randomly select albums, tracks and some topics to discuss.

In this blog post you can read a little about how we put together this show - but the main attraction is the show itself of course!

Hit play on the Mixcloud player below to listen to the show, once again featuring cover artwork of our signature bunny, from photographer Bob Burnett. A quick note - the header image for this blog post features Binky who passed away the year before Isla was born. I searched my phone for a random picture of a bunny, and this popped up. It felt randomly apt.

We hope you enjoy the show...

Tracklist

01 Benoît Pioulard & Offthesky - Fed On Lilies
02 Bibio - Sleep On The Wing
03 Greg Foat - Undulation
04 Ichiko Aoba - 惑星の泪 (Wakusei no Namida)
05 First Snow of The Year - Shores
06 Benoît Pioulard & Offthesky - Hyacinth Girl
07 Bibio - A Couple Swim
08 Greg Foat - Symphonie Pacifique
09 Ichiko Aoba - Coloratura
10 First Snow of The Year - Hibernation

THE TOPICS

To start with, Isla drew a grid on a sheet of A4 paper and wrote down as many random topics as she could think of inside each of the spaces.

The themes ranged between animals, the natural world, objects and more. She cut these all up and put them into a small pot - then randomly selected five. I didn't know the topics she was selecting but I have a suspicion most were animals!

We wrote down the topics on a sheet of paper and then we Googled them to find out some facts. We'd use either Gemini's AI summary at the top of Google, or different articles that appeared in the search. We chose 3-4 of our favourite facts and wrote them down.

I won't share all of the topics here, as we want these to feel like a random surprise as you listen. But as a clue, Isla has drawn pictures to match each one...

THE RECORDS

Next, we needed some music! We repeated the grid exercise, writing either CD or Vinyl. Isla ensured that there was an even distribution of both formats and then cut them up, before we selected one for each topic.

Isla headed into the office with me and for each corresponding selection, she chose something from the shelf. She pulled out records based on the spine and then the final decision generally related to artwork. So in many ways, this process wasn't random - as she was choosing music based on what felt visually appealing. But the actual music on these records was random, as Isla wasn't familiar with any of the albums she selected. Well, apart from one...

This little exercise was quite fascinating for me, putting on my record label hat again. As fans of music and record collectors, we make these judgments all the time in record shops and online. There have been many times when I've flicked through the sleeves and then have been taken by a piece of cover art. Invariably, they're old ECM records but that's another story! This same judgment happens online all the time too. A Bandcamp genre-feed shows you several pieces of cover art, and you have to decide what to play. You may recognise names, but before you have a chance to read the words, your eyes process the visuals first.

Next we needed to select a track randomly from each album. This time we used an app called the Random Number Generator - we entered the total number of tracks and then Isla hit the button. We stayed with whatever track was selected regardless of how it sounds. As we selected the tracks, Isla had the CD or vinyl sleeves in her hand. As we were selecting the Ichiko Aoba album, she discovered the liner note booklet inside the sleeve and she was really taken by it - looking at the drawings and pictures, and reading Ichiko's words too. Another magical moment that only reinforced my love for the physical format, particularly as the big thing next year for Whitelabrecs is... to include liner note booklets!

*Note - you can tell I've written this blog post rather than Isla...the longest part is about records. If you read this in years to come Isla, sorry!

THE SHOW

As always, it took us a while to find a spare hour to hit record. Once we did, after all the effort we'd gone to in selecting our topics and some music - we discovered that the show was only 15 minutes long! There wasn't enough space to read out the facts that we'd learnt. Isla didn't want to leave any of these out, so we decided to add a twist... something less random.

Isla listened to the five albums in turn, and she chose her favourite track from each. I noticed that some of the tracks she was drawn to the most, were based on the song titles and for some albums choosing a favourite was very difficult, particularly Bibio's Sleep On The Wing! Isla's never been one for choosing favourites. The big discovery from making this show, was that she was very much drawn to Ichiko Aoba's work. Not just the music, but the whole presentation of the sleeve. I even heard her practicing the pronunciation of Ichiko's name whilst we were out shopping!

Isla and I will be back next year with our next episode of Quiet Burrow, so stay tuned! We enjoyed this theme so much, that maybe we'll revisit it... do let us know what you thought of the 'random' format.