Digging With Flo NTS
Intrigue: Burning Sun (BBC Radio 4) | BBC Sounds
Blum El Extraordinario
The Ashes (Radio 5 Live) | BBC Sounds
By far the most delightful listen this week was a half hour spent in the company of NTS Radio’s Monday to Wednesday breakfast show host Flo (real name Flo Dill) and MC-producer Novelist (real name Kwadwo Quentin Kankam). Dill has a new interview podcast, Digging With Flo, where she invites an artist to join her at her allotment for a spot of gardening and a lot of chat, and Novelist was her first guest.
It’s a simple enough idea, but the productive yet meditative nature of gardening, and the privacy of Flo’s allotment space (nobody else wanders into the recording), means that the guest can really relax and open up. At least Novelist certainly did. “Looking at plants, that’s actually a life form!” he said, wowed. “I’m at a new stage in my life, it’s even nice to be gardening.” The 26-year-old musical whiz, who has released tracks since he was 17, has recently been in Ghana: “Probably one of the best scenes I’ve ever experienced, the vibe is second to none.” He was detoxing over there (he recommended a blend of pineapple, cucumber and water: “Such a powerful detox I was even alarmed!”), as well as making music.
Oh, he was such an excellent interviewee: funny about his lack of gardening knowhow, open about his family background, completely chill and charming at all times. And Dill, curious without being disingenuous, was great too. The result was a genuinely lovely conversation and a fine start to the series, which will feature Cosey Fanni Tutti, Mark Leckey and others. For those who aren’t familiar, NTS is an east London online radio station known for its excellent musical policy. Regular DJs are 50% funded by listener contributions, and it’s the place to go for interesting, offbeat, top-quality tunes. Resolutely alternative in all the best ways.
Here’s another podcast about music, or at least about the cultural furore that can come with mainstream chart success. In Intrigue: Burning Sun, reporter Chloe Hadjimatheo takes a deep dive into a K-pop sex scandal. K-pop (the K stands for Korean) is a very particular type of pop music: catchy, highly polished, huge all over the world, made by cute young singers and dancers who can seem more like squeaky-clean cartoon characters than actual human beings.
In contrast to K-pop’s seemingly ever-shiny happiness, Burning Sun is a very dark tale. In 2019, it was discovered that several male K-pop stars were filming women they were having sex with and then passing the clips around all their mates. Worse: it appeared that some of the women had been drugged and therefore didn’t consent to the sex, or the filming. Even worse: there was a nightclub where this happened regularly, co-owned by a K-pop-star, and rich men came to the club because drugging and raping women was what they wanted to do.
A very grim story. But what’s even more shocking is how Hadjimatheo shows us that it’s actually a snapshot of the whole of South Korean society: how women are treated, how sex is regarded, how rape is regarded too (no mention of consent; rape is defined as violent sex). Illicit filming is so common that many women have a clip-on gadget attached to their phone that checks public bathrooms for a camera. Women’s rights appear to be minimal. If a woman is known to have had sex – even with her regular partner – she is slut-shamed online to a shocking degree. The sexism is so rife that one female politician, nothing to do with K-pop, simply wore a red dress to an event and was attacked for weeks. Is it any wonder, as we discover in episode 4, that young women are turning away from men, refusing sex and marriage?
Hadjimatheo has clearly worked very hard to get interviews and stand up all of these terrible stories. Her presentation, which I initially found slightly stilted, is exceptionally clear, even for those for whom English is not their first language. This is a gripping, disturbing series, made worse, somehow, when you hear the occasional clip of female K-pop stars speaking: they sound so upbeat and eager to please. (Weirdly, I could only access five of the six episodes on BBC Sounds. Why not just add the final episode?)
If you want a little cheering up after that, Blum is an interesting new drama from El Extraordinario. Adapted from a highly successful Spanish-language show, this is an art mystery-cum-real-life mystery story with classy recording techniques, a good script and involving intrigue. Emma, a journalist, is fascinated by Clara, an art history student who disappeared while researching her PhD on a Swiss artist, Ursula Blum. We follow Emma, following Clara, following Ursula, around various Swiss cities and museums. The start is a little slow, and occasionally the acting somewhat stilted, but the story gets more absorbing as the tension increases and Emma’s reality seems to shift.
And if you really want to chill, there’s always the cricket. There’s nothing more calming, even for non-fans like me, than listening to the abstract chunter and flow of 5 Live’s Ashes commentary, especially now Geoff “grumpy git” Boycott has left. Listening on Thursday, after an hour, somebody commented that it had been a thrilling morning and I thought: “Has it?” Two wickets down and England more determined, apparently, though I’d barely registered the drama. I’d just been gently chuckling to the mild insights of Phil Tufnell – “He can give it a wallop,” he said, of one Australian coming to the crease. “Mind you, they’re all big ’uns.” Jim Maxwell brought some fieriness. When one wicket went, he said: “And a swish and a nick and an ‘out’! Bye bye! He’s snicked it… a windy woof!” On-the-hoof poetry. Beautiful.
