Fortnightly London Fields, E8 Since 2021
Nightjar is an interview show recorded in a first-floor room on Martello Street, above the bike shop. Every fortnight Kwesi and Effie sit down with one person who makes something in this city, and let the tape run until it stops being an interview.
Latest Episode 42 14 July
with Sunil Raiker, mastering engineer, Vitrine Audio
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Sunil has cut lacquers for three generations of Hackney labels out of a room the size of a transit van. He talks about learning on a Studer at sixteen, the year he nearly sold everything, and what he thinks a record loses when nobody has to commit.
The index
Forty-two conversations, all of them in one take. Open one to play it where it sits.
Bea has run a 200-capacity room off Chatsworth Road for eleven years and has never once broken even on a Tuesday. On the arithmetic of a small venue, why the bar subsidises the art, and the licensing officer she now sends a Christmas card.
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Josephine took the pitch over from her mother in 1984 and has watched four waves of the market come and go from behind the same trestle. On wax print, on regulars who now bring their grandchildren, and on being the last person there who remembers the fire.
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Tam sat down and worked out what a sourdough really costs, down to the gas, and then had to decide who he was willing to lose. A conversation about pricing that turns into one about who a neighbourhood bakery is actually for.
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Eleven thousand tapes in a vault under the arches, most of them unlabelled. Priya explains what happens to a recording nobody transfers, and plays us ninety seconds of a Dalston street in 1978.
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Callum takes buildings apart carefully so the next thing can be made from them. On salvage, on the difference between reclaimed and rescued, and on the three months he spent making one counter out of a school gym.
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Episodes 001 to 036 are in the feed, and always will be. We have never taken one down.
Two of us
Producer · asks the first question
Ten years in local radio before he got tired of three-minute items. Kwesi runs the desk, keeps the levels honest and is the reason there is no music bed under anything. He has never once cut a pause for time.
Writer · asks the second question
Effie wrote about this borough for a paper that no longer exists. She does the reading, brings the awkward one, and will happily sit in silence for eleven seconds until somebody fills it. Usually they do.
Three minutes
Pulled from episode 42. Each one drops you straight into the player above.
Every other Monday, 6am
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Transcript · Episode 42 · 01:22–02:04
EFFIEYou said earlier there is a moment you wait for. What does it sound like?
SUNILIt does not sound like anything. That is the point. Everyone stops talking about the mix and just listens to it, and if it is right nobody says so for about ten seconds.
KWESIAnd if it is wrong?
SUNILSomebody clears their throat. Honestly. Forty years and it is still a throat. Then we go again.
EFFIEDo you tell them, or do you wait?
SUNILI wait. If I say it first it becomes my record. It has to stay theirs, otherwise what am I for.
Every episode is transcribed in full and posted with it. Read the whole of episode 42.
