Asylum is an immersive piece that takes listeners into a disorienting world of raw, urgent, whispered confessions layered on a cinematic soundscape worthy of your best psychological thriller. Listeners are left with a vague sense of uneasiness, and one piece of advice: do not look in the kitchen sink.

The piece was created for Small Audio Art, the online space by Phoebe McIndoe where audio artists respond to simple prompts, like a kitchen sink, every other month. It's a low-pressure spot for short, creative audio pieces that connect makers worldwide.

This piece reflects a journey from witnessing US events and feeling powerless to taking creative action.

As an independent audio producer living in Sardinia (Italy), I could not make sense of my desperation while witnessing ICE violence in Minneapolis. I was horrified, so I decided to channel my energy into creating an incantation, using my skills to feel less powerless.

This piece aims to be cathartic resistance and magical defiance against oppression. I used the only weapon that I have, my creativity, as a tool to denounce horrific realities and, hopefully, inspire other creators to use art for activism to contribute to change.

Read, share, and speak it aloud.

Please note: The protest sound at the end has been recorded in Minneapolis, used courtesy of stevevader101 -- https://freesound.org/s/841767/ -- License: Attribution 4.0

Didn’t You Ask for Kids? is a political satirical piece about the relationship between Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump, all based on the misunderstanding arising from the fact that the word kids means both children and young goats. The piece starts with a weird phone call in which Epstein is informed that the kids ordered are about to be delivered to his island, “just in time for the party with my friend Donald”

but when the kids arrive, Epstein is very disappointed, while Trump will still able to find a silver lining.

The Biannual Sonic Dash is always a great opportunity to dive into another of those magic moments of high-pressure creation: you have until Sunday to come up with a two-minute audio addressing the prompt emailed to you on Friday. The catch is that you cannot use any pre-existing material, so you have to compose the music and make up the sound effects (if you use any). The prompt for this latest round was “those meddling kids”, yes, the Scooby-Doo catchphrase. I was lucky to have a small, dedicated team (Roman Lillian Uras-Garvin and Romeo Maria Minutolo), and together we brainstormed, wrote, and produced our piece.

I’d like to share a bit about our process. We agreed that we wanted something original (so we immediately put aside anything related to Scooby-Doo), humorous but also poignant, ideally making a comment on something important.

I think our Didn’t You Ask for Kids? hit the mark. This time, we didn’t make it to the 10 finalists, but we love it as it is: completely self-produced (keep an ear out for the sound effects created with doorbells, an air fryer, and a hair dryer), absolutely current in its content, definitely original (verging on the absurd), and we find it unquestionably humorous.

I hope you enjoy listening as much as we loved creating it!