A field recording in three parts, capturing the demolition of Rachel Point and Rathbone Point on the Nightingale Estate, Hackney.
Rachel and Rathbone Point were the last of five 22-storey towers to be demolished on East London’s Nightingale Estate, as part of UK government’s regeneration scheme beginning in the late 1980’s. The estate had been home to the seminal pirate radio stations Kool FM and Rush FM during the early 1990’s
Part 1 - Five Minute Warning
Part 2 - Three minutes to go
Part 3 - demolition
Rachel & Rathbone was originally produced as a longer work for the London Placard Headphones Festival in 2004, featuring an informal interview with an ex-tenant of Rathbone Point who described his experience of squatting at the building during the years before its demolition. The piece has also been shown at Sounds Like Trouble at Stroud Valleys Arts Centre; CTRL_ALT_DEL Festival in Istanbul; OTTON OSAKA in Osaka (Japan); and was published as a limited edition CD in ArtLicks Issue 3.
Technical details:
Stereo sound (mixed from original mid-side recordings)
Duration: 2mins 41secs (part 1), 2mins 12secs (part 2), 3mins 28secs (part 3).
Further context:
Watch footage of the demolition of Farnell Point in 1998 at London Screen Archives.
Below, listen to a Kool FM broadcast from the summer of 1993, recorded the week after a high-profile police raid on the station at Embley Point.