federico torres

Baladi explores the connection between place and identity through immersive soundscapes and curated local music, bridging field recordings with experimental sounds to explore the gap between physical and virtual spaces.

Baladi is a radio show that explores the interplay between sound, space, and culture.

Each episode is grounded on a specific city or place. It takes listeners on a sonic journey, beginning with an immersive soundscape crafted from field recordings and archival sounds, and transitioning into a curated selection of music by artists from the place explored.

The program serves as both a reflection on the relationship between sound and space and a bridge to experience different cultures through their sonic landscapes.

Part 1 - Soundscape: The episode begins with an original soundscape crafted by the Baladí team. Using field recordings and ambient sound design, we recreate the essence of a specific physical space. This part sets the tone and establishes the spatial context, immersing the listener in the textures, rhythms, and atmosphere of a real-world location.

Part 2 - Music Curation: Building on the established space, the second part shifts focus to the music of that location. We present a curated selection of ambient, electronic, and experimental music from the local scene. Whether it’s artists born there, residing there, having worked there, or publishing with a local label.

This segment explores how the cultural and physical environment influences musical expression, creating a dialogue between the real and the imagined, the tangible and the abstract.

Baladí unfolds this week with a summer whisper from Berlin, both familiar and elusive, inviting you to lean in closer and catch echoes of unnoticed moments.

What follows is an hour of ambient and experimental pieces by artists who’ve made Berlin their home but whose stories often began elsewhere. Their tracks thread subtle shifts, glitches that blur, drones that rise and fall like distant voices, hinting at untold journeys. Sounds of departure and arrival that birth new soundscapes even as roots remain.

alp seyrekbasan & federico torres - strassenleben

barker - difference and repetition

alejandro mosso - 52.491800, 13.201667

judith hamann - schloss, night

pavel milyakov & lucas dupuy - path

aural - century plant (agave nigra)

sleepland - curduroy

emeka ogboh - verbal drift

KMRU - along a wall

masayoshi fujita - stelar

perila - nia

Baladí returns, this time from Mexico City. A capital of contrasts, where noise barely escapes the horizontal vertigo. The city that saw us grow up.

What follows is an hour of ambient and experimental music by artists marked by the different layers of this monster city. Field recordings dissolve into the smog, rhythms crack with the concrete, and melodies float among 23 million people.

baladi - camino a la piedra del comal

belafonte sensacional - llamas rexio

israel martinez - mi vida

isaac soto - flor de terremoto

edgar mondragón - el proceso de creer

atmos - esmeraldas

aaaa - el peso de latam microhm - a soundscape of a broken kernel

federico sanchez flores - soy la cruz que cuelga de mi cuello

rogelio the IIIrd - incoherencias 1 & 2

joven tom - jacarandas

las gardenias - apertura

kuro kasetto / kotanna - #8

un rêve - las aves se reúnen en tu interior

concepción huerta - magma como la vena en el territorio

zuaraz - colofón

On its third instance, Baladí turns its ears and microphones back to Berlin, the city we call home. Currently wrapped in its summer dress, Berlin is home to a grand mixture of inhabitants: ravers, creatives, eccentrics and lovers, to name a few. Some belong, some are passing through, and a rare few dedicate their (non)music to transmuting the physical and emotional into sound. We explore how everyday sounds in the environment can influence emotions.

Berlin, an endlessly explorable place, continuous spouting out different frequencies. What follows is merely one fragment of that ongoing creative output.

leander steinmetz - mosaico de experiencias

max loderbauer - harmonic

bonking berlin bastards - i remember all my lovers

ulla / ultrafog - double carmen

to rococo rot - greenwich

ludwig wandinger - voided 1428

special guest dj - superbath

ashley maurice / nilgün ozer - you are two minds

nino theys - steam felt soft

skee mask - MDP2

Istanbul is a city where Asia and Europe face each other, where the old and the new coexist without fully blending, the sounds carry that same tension. Traditional instruments speak with synthesizers. Folk rhythms weave through electronic textures.

Istanbul watched Bülent Arel be born in 1919. A pioneer of looping techniques and early electronic composition, his legacy still echoes in the work of today’s ambient and experimental artists. A new generation continues to emerge from this city, shaped by its contradictions and deep currents.

baladí - marmara

cenk ergün x alvin curran - ara taksim

alper maral x mert topel - volta

daire 2: general gramofon - kids in garden

sunfear - porcelain

human scum - not angry *

sumatran black - elegy for a lost cosmonaut

kaosmos - hyperspace *

bülent arel - postlude from music for a sacred service

ekin fil - d3 transit

cevdet erek - zincirli

anadol - ay çürüdü

non square - everything we miss

jtamul - rahatla

cihan gülbudak x meczup - sworn mother

emre girginkaya - ok, you are

* samples from the movie crossing (2024) by Levan Akin were used.

Madrid, a city that seems to stand still under the summer sun: its squares empty, the daily flow becomes a viscous liquid that slips between old pavements and the buildings reveal their whiteness with an almost violent clarity. At these times, when the noise gives way to cicadas and swallows, Madrid seems to show its most present voice.

Next, an hour of ambient and experimental music created in Madrid by artists who, each in their own way, inhabit this city. Their pieces capture the calm imposed by the heat, as well as the contrast between the 40 °C of the day and an ice-cold summer red wine. This is the Madrid we explore in this episode of Baladí: a place where urban emptiness finds presence, and silence becomes a soundscape.

baladí - almadén #18

fatima miranda - diapaspón

finis africae - bahía de los genoveses

menhir - deshaz de luz

orfeón gagarin - salmos funiculares, pt.6

suso saiz - mexican bells (for jorge reyes)

miguel ángel tolosa - salon 20-04

iury lech - barreras

luis delgado - el palacio de emir

oisatsana - nomadic drift 3

Baladí returns to Mexico City, or rather to the Federal District, and this time lands in a bloodstained square. The Second of October is not forgotten.

"Habría que lavar no sólo el piso; la memoria.

Habría que quitarles los ojos a los que vimos,

asesinar también a los deudos,

que nadie llore, que no haya más testigos.

Pero la sangre echa raíces

y crece como un árbol en el tiempo.

La sangre en el cemento, en las paredes,

en una enredadera: nos salpica,

nos moja de vergüenza, de vergüenza, de vergüenza.

Las bocas de los muertos nos escupen una perpetua sangre quieta."

— Jaime Sabines, fragmento de Tlatelolco 68

baladí - ARP.mexico68

antonio russek - mandala

diego lozano - II. revulta de voces

CNDSD - in tongues

estrella del sol - no existe respuesta

sebastián fuentes - los días de antes

amina cyu - escucha*

NIMA IKKI, turning torso - ... persona noche

ice cyborg - arnaaluk

interspecifics - cdmx*

monte / magnétophonique - moist jungle mist II

roberto romero molina - escandinavia por ala delta

oscar chavez - la llorona del estudiante

* contains audio from rafael lozano-hemmer's 'voz alta' (2008)

Bogotá: a city of contrasts, a rainy valley in the heart of a tropical country. Unlike other Colombian cities, Bogotá seems to lack a singular musical identity, presenting instead a mixture of diasporas and dissidences blended with tradition and urban sounds.

A city’s soundscape becomes more diverse and eclectic as its density grows, and Bogotá is a clear example of this.

If Colombian music is known for being extroverted, percussive, and festive, this space offers a pause: a moment of reflection and introspection in an environment where constant noise makes stillness a rarity.

baladí - sueño

dj 1+1 - florecer

ela minus - let them have the internet

nmgza malva - nmi

las hermanas - dormir un año entero

maria manuela - tersita cantora drumless

n.hardem + las hermanas - harare

BUHA 2030 - rito

ana maría romano - el suelo desde el viento

colombian drone mafia y gibrana cervantes - bogotá

jacqueline nova -resonancias

iphi - scenario

carlos villamizar x nicolás rosero - sacudida hípnica

nyksan - paralisis

ezmeralda - moriremos

London: a city at the heart of the United Kingdom. The city provides a constant canvas of gray skies, movement and crossing of cultures: eclectic, big and hard to predict.

It provides a gigantic pool of musical talent, merging different genres and ideas. Musically it's been at the forefront of innovation whether it was rock, punk or ambient music, the city has always provided insights of what is to come. We take a moment to sip on some tea, sit back and explore the different sounds of the city.

baladí - under the brown fog of a winter dawn

nala sinephro - continuum 8

brian eno & robert fripp - the heavenly music corporation V

james blake . playing robots into heaven

julia set - folds

seefeel - signals

puma blue - olive / letter to ATL

jon hopkins - abandon window

actress - holy water

kai campos - zone 3 (city limits)

whatever the weather - 4°c

dan nicholls - fermentation

moin - the day

rothko - no sails

clark - snowbird

burial - upstairs flat

ana quiroga - tensegrity

devonté hynes & third coast percussion - for all its fury: VII gather

haiku for tokio thanks for the music. atte Baladí

baladí - haiku

tokyo ambient collective - ocean wave

celer - in the wind

hiroshi Yoshimura - blink

hiroshi ebina - don't be a victim of your thoughts

el fog - the fog of the far small town

ultrafog - the good witch

ryoji ikeda - ultrasonics 10

james mcAlister & chihei hatakeyama - four

susumu yokota - sakashima (1983)

chihei hatakeyama and shun ishiwaka - M2

ryuichi sakamoto - fullmoon

takuro ojada - the room

jorge queijo x hiroki chiba x yoshio machida - leave

ichiko aoba - HORO

Baladí returns this time not to a particular city but to the historical region of Occitania, where Occitan (langue d’oc) once spread across villages, hills, and valleys. This language, fighting to avoid being erased, has long blurred political frontiers.

For Baladí’s 10th episode we traveled through southern France recording field sounds that form the soundscape that opens the show. We then gathered music that reflects Occitan culture: chants, traditional instruments, spoken word, and arrangements reflecting on this heritage, alongside experimental, electronic, and ambient artists who don’t directly reference Occitan but live in a space shaped by it.

baladí - la mer des rochers

joan francés tisnèr - amontanhada (preludi)

toucan - pangaea II

amandra - a1. cyborg plikana

EUS, postdrome & saåad - dervish dealer

lys finke - das lied der göttin inanna und der engel, teil 1

jericho - alleluia

nomina - the collapse

pierre jolivet/PACIFIC 231 - perception transversale (soundtrack)

toad - polka à mouret / L'amor de la bicòta

trucs - Abstrach

cocanha - quauque còp (version polifonica)

france - pt.1

aidan baker, saåad & frédéric d.oberland - phase IV

julsy - le ga ci

dj lostboi - PUF 2 LAX

BRUIT ≤ - ephemeral

joan francés tisnèr - marcha a pè 3 arremesclatge

isoleren lawaai - unnamed people

Santo Domingo, a city where noise has a home of its own, a constant vibration. Voices clash, sounds collide, creating a collective deafness, yet this very chaos amplifies the city’s sound.

Silence is rare, a delicate pause in the endless chorus. The city may sleep, but it is never truly silent. And within this abundance of sound lies its charm, defining it and making it unmistakably itself.

baladí - bulla

mediopicky - UniKorn

sb - archivos de audio rotos

alina Labour - OCD

mediopicky - ROs4LI4 no se invento ese sonidito

GETAN - recuerdos

sb - alción

dis.tant - al cielo el sol. (feat. kaitlin bruno)

⛥幻想的な夢!!! ヅ - THE END OF THE BEGINNING

ivan pierre - to look within (part 3) x kelman duran - dale dembow

boundary - en el medio

samuel caraballo - chocan las olas

bug bus piano - 77 7bf f (ft. fty)

la ñapa - de

meme vivaldi - LATE NIGHT VIRTUAL 6

samuel caraballo - el paisaje es para quien pueda verlo

boundary - son quienes cortan los cielos grises

kelman duran - introductions

reptiles reptiles - slowly

(R)ui(D)o - ivi se puso sentimental al final x soFia - santo domingo es una ciudad muy bullosa

baladí’s b.012 marks one year of the show. It opens with a collaborative soundscape made from @horriblehenry3 recordings of his day-to-day life in the Bay Area. From there, the show moves through music rooted in the region. With Pauline Oliveros and Terry Riley setting the tone, the show traces back to tape music as an early form of sound manipulation, whose influence continues to echo across many of the genres heard throughout Baladí’s first year. Oliveros’ idea of deep listening runs through it: the distinction between hearing and listening, and listening understood as the closest thing to consciousness. Baladí invites you to do both. Try lowering the volume and notice how the music blends with your space, then raise it and focus on how the room responds. Or just hear…

baladí - the schmeed *

charles amirkhanian - II – in praise of the venerable piano roll *

pauline oliveros - deep listening (lear) *

terry riley - in c *

marc kate - deface II

r beny - the romantic image of ruins

kk.shucko - another missed mirage

lucy liyou - fold the horse

grouper - moon is sharp

FYI birds - lourenço seven

jefre cantu-ledesma - mirrors death

chris otchy - un perrito tranquilo

christopher willits x ryuichi sakamoto - sentience

pauline oliveros - deep listening (ione)

* contains fragments pauline olivero’s talk ‘the difference between hearing and listening’

baladi.013 takes us to Mexico df, join us in listening to what this city of multitudes has to offer.

“cuidad puñado de alcantarillas, ciudad cristal de vahos y escarcha mineral, ciudad presencia de todos nuestros olvidos, ciudad dolor inmóvil, ciudad de la brevedad inmensa, ciudad del sol detenido, ciudad a fuego lento, ciudad con el agua al cuello, ciudad de los tres ombligos, ciudad del hedor torcido, ciudad rígida entre el aire y los gusanos, ciudad vieja en las luces, ciudad nueva junto al polvo esculpido, ciudad reflexión de la furia, ciudad del fracaso ansiado, ciudad en tempestad de cúpulas, ciudad abrevadero de las fauces rígidas del hermano empapado de sed y costras, ciudad tejida en la amnesia, ciudad perro, ciudad famélica, suntuosa villa, ciudad lepra y cólera, hundida ciudad.”

- “La región más transparente” Carlos Fuentes

baladí - pesos

ims - killer kumbia

delise & hermanito - solaz

RSNNC x CNCPCN - reflejos

el trio de omar rodriguez lópez - noche día

rogelio the iiird - queen d jane

co de sus - paralelas

sanje - saúl

luces en el jardín - andrélle

gibrana cervantes - moving through our waters

fuera de mi alcance - A281444

bob clynes - otro yo

fernando vigueras - trazo

max buzone - dolce

ims - mexico city theme (rebajaladi mix)

dewey martino - daduii

luisa almaguer - hacernos así

baladi.014 takes us to Guatemala City through the eyes of artist David Bianchi, who describes his city as follows: ““When I think of Guatemala City, I think of:

_ Drafts; no matter where I am, there’s always a breeze blowing, swaying, amplifying and carrying the bustle of the street, its echo heard from afar.

_ I think of the valley where it lies, and how easy it is for me to find my bearings, not just amongst the concrete and the cables, but I know exactly where I am in the world.

_ I think of the sunset, because every sunset is like a play unfolding before my eyes; the colours of the sky change so gently and subtly, the clouds burst into flames.

_ I think of the steady rhythm of day and night, sunrises heralded by a chorus of birds and sunsets where they add the final notes to the day.

_ I also think of a place changing at breakneck speed, yet the sounds I encounter there have always been there. Markets, vans, fleeting conversations with people: sounds that many find a nuisance but for others mean joy, relaxation and a sense of everyday life. Guatemala City is such a noisy place, and untangling that noise means knowing how to live within it, move through it, decipher it and find refuge there.

_ The most important memory I brought back to Berlin is the sound of my hometown. Moments alone or with friends, of wild fun or introspection, finding oneself in such a chaotic and increasingly suffocating urban environment and salvaging memories and recollections: these are just a few fragments of the soundscapes I managed to compile. Guatemala City is the belly button of the Americas; it is my home; there is no other place that sounds quite like it.”

baladí - ciudad ombligo

balam ajpu - iq: viento

alex hentze - el viento lo sabe

∆GU∆TECK∆ - S_u_FF____ER

marimba contemporánea - resonar de dos mundos

el mundo como flor y como invento - 75 otros nombres

bvdub x east of oceans - we stood in fields of light

koyak - infinitos espejos

introAcido x diana morales - el reproche de la falda a la noche

mabe fratti - pasaste por mi para ir al campo

radio zumbido - dj salvación

Ɥɔǝʇɐɔnʎ - k̸͍̟͕͌̀͆

200m - 50% off the online learning platform where kids can build their own world

asimov - coordenada

koyak - ladrillos color piel

mabe fratti x jonas arena - rompiendo piel

the san lucas band - la chirimía

baladi.015 introduces us, through ISA’s eyes, to Spain’s quintessential city of gunpowder and fire: Valencia. Large enough to offer a diverse cultural scene, yet small enough to explore with ease and ensure you don’t miss a single nook and cranny.

The orange trees, the parks, the orchards, the sun, the sea, the rice paddies, cycling, the terraces, paella, the unique character of each of the neighbourhoods that make up the city, and the industrial landscape of the port are all elements that shape this city, which moves slowly by day and quickly by night.

With a rich tradition of nightlife, where the ‘Ruta del Bacalao’ is a landmark in the country’s underground history and remains to this day a key destination for discovering a promising music scene.

baladí - la pólvora

polifeme - f

mínim - sakura

r - 010 x venerandi - umbral

james p. keeler - dedicated to rubén garcía and j. gonzález

cuneta - aju, aju, aju ju, aju

negro - órbita

otro - the planets

alan lana - cluster o

castillo de peluche - recoveco

otro - heron city

W.W.A.T. - crunchy granola purist

pablo ojeda - stagnant calm

negro - valencia ciborg

vanka - foc en estufa

cuneta - esculturas sonoras (impro)

jerikavia - seeking light?

matacandil - no crida el gos, sino l'angoxia

negro - cuando los pájaros vinieron a verme

baladi.016 brings us back home to Berlin, a place of experimentation and contrasts, innovation and extremes. In Berlin music, arts and culture converge on every corner. Despite the ongoing cuts to culture: the artists within the city try to maintain its status as a haven of play, acceptance and vanguard. We take a sonic tour through its history and many of the artists shaping the sonic landscape of the city.

baladí - beim tischtennis

moritz von oswald - libersi

artefakt & KMRU - piano movement II

significant other - bad blood

lena geue - the end

guido kohn + julián galay - 1

diamantista - ASHES

sofia clonn - lo que venga

hernán vives - temple IV

magda mayas x tina douglas - point 7B

romain c. bertheau - trichomonas gallinae (take 4)

petra hermanova - prayer

peter kirn - topography of dreams

whitney johnson x lia kohl x macie stewart - stone piece

xenia reaper - static kiss

baladi.017 arrives in Mumbai it opens in traffic: horns, engines, tuk tuks. Underneath all of it sits a much older sound. The tanpura, the drone instrument used in Indian classical music that holds one steady, sustained tone, a sound that reverberates in modern ambient drone music to this day.

Mumbai's seasons shape its sound, the monsoon most of all: months of rain that change how the whole city moves and listens. It's also the home of Bollywood, and of a dense, layered, everyday noise its artists grow up inside.

baladí - tuctuctuctuc

vidushi kishori amonka - piya bina suno cheji mharo des

riatsu - the calm after the crime

kaali duniya - gatekeeper Assassinator

four tet - evening side

hedrun x ba - habitat

farrah mulla - out of reach

lata mangeshkar - aaja poya tohe pyar doon

ensemble extrakte, gebrüder teichman, sandeep bhagwati - an amorphous cloud

sandunes x gideon crevoshay - indeterminance

RaaKshaS Sound - isolation dub

the national institute of design - after the war

hector zazou x swara - kanoon ampa

kulamarga jungle discipline

sun kin - nursery talk