Days and nights, living in the clarity of mind and voice: Radio Hito’s compositions get stripped down to the bare elements while still retaining the solemn power of truth. The words of others gain meaning of their own through a contemplatively personal rendition whose simplicity manages to brim with endless poetic possibility. (GGR)
Zen My Nguyen under her alias Radio Hito has spent the last two years adapting a poem by Claude Royet-Journoud, ‘L’usage et les attributs du cœur’ (POL, 2021). A ten-sequences song cycle for soundfonts and voice and an Italian libretto which had evolved over the course of about 80 concerts, from Galicia to Kazakhstan, before finding their recorded form. Her project is experiential and based on principles of economy of performance, simple words, forms and contexts; if poetry is a ‘profession of ignorance’ according to Claude Royet-Journoud, then Radio Hito would gladly be a hobby that strives to know.
‘L’uso e gli attributi del cuore’, a song cycle by Radio Hito Out on March 2026 on Maple Death Records & Meakusma.
During the two years prior to its release ‘L’uso e gli attributi del cuore’, has been performed live about 80 times including special arrangements for prepared piano, electric keyboard, fm radios, church organs, Philicorda and visuals in Europe and Asia featuring on special occasions: Suzan Peeters (Accordion), Alex Andropoulos [able noise] (Drums), Arthur Chambry (Percussions/trumpet), David Bennewith (Visuals), Fera (electronics), Adrián de Alfonso (FM amplification), Omar Cheikh (Visuals).
Guests are Jessica Higgins and Matthew Walkerdine of Glasgow, UK, both formerly of the bands Vital Idles and Mordwaffe. They have been closely tied with DIY music, art and publishing for over a decade. Using (amateur) electronics, singing, speaking and field recording they make songs which blend the rhythms of popular music and contemporary approaches to collage, sampling, improvisation and repetition. As inspired by film and art as they are the legacies of twee underground and avant garde experimentalism, their loose, domestically twinged compositions explore feelings, atmospheres and moments which are hard to articulate and the quite literal notion of being a “guest”.
“I wish I was special” is their debut record, and with it a chance taken to explore terrain not previously covered by their other groups. The ideology of DIY practice appears integral to these eleven compositions, side-stepping virtuosity in favour of instinct and impression, unafraid to press unknown buttons and walk head first into mistake, finding inspiration where convention might not otherwise allow one to tread. The results are confoundingly fresh, sharp-of-mind, and unusually intimate. There’s an obvious intelligence at play here, and no little humour of course, but crucially there’s also a sense of the personal, a first-thought/best-thought (auto)didacticism that celebrates shared understanding and implicit trust. What, ultimately, we might view as the fearlessness in radically being yourself around another. It’s an approach that draws some comparison with the private musings of Flaming Tunes, Idea Fire Company’s domestic electronics, or perhaps even Annea Lockwood’s framing of emotional connection within avant garde structures. More so, Guests represent a compelling continuation of DIY post-punk experimentation that values intuition over prowess, and with it guides the listener into unexpected spaces that somehow comfort as much as they challenge.
Glasgow based artist and writer Giuseppe Mistretta works with synthesis and field recordings to create atmospheres for others to inhabit. He is interested in what can unfold in the present moment and how different variables can help to shape it.
