Season 2
Knot
Darkfield Radio – Season 2 was recently released and varies quite a bit from the three episodes of Season 1. Where the first set of three shows were released over time and all had very different stories, and indeed two of the shows required participation from co-located pairs of people, Season 2’s Knot is a three part audio experience occurring in three different locations spread out over a single night for an individual participant.
Knot chapter one takes place on a park bench, chapter two in the passenger seat of a car, and chapter three in your own home. You can realistically do this from any location, but part of the appeal of Darkfield’s audio performances is to create realistic soundscapes for the environment you’re in. Each of the three parts lasts for 20 to 30 minutes and there is a 30 to 40 minute gap between each part.
Chapter 1 – Park bench
So on a recent very warm evening, I found myself sitting on a park bench in East London, with a nice view that sadly I wasn’t about to enjoy for long as the first part of the show commenced and I was instructed to close my eyes. Obviously keeping this as spoiler free as possible means that there isn’t a huge amount of detail that can be divulged. I thought the soundscape created was great, but that’s always the case with a Darkfield production and I found the narrative suitably mysterious and engaging. Sadly the environment didn’t help with the immersion. Sounds and voices came from physically impossible locations, and to be perfectly honest, I was more scared of sitting on the bench with my eyes closed and headphones on than anything in the performance.
Chapter 2 – Front passenger seat of a car
Next up I headed to my car, which at the time was in a multi-story car park. I struggled with the audio placement more on this one than any others, but that just might be due to the layout of my car. Again noises and voices came from either impossible places or just didn’t fit placement wise in my environment. For most of this I had to tilt my head to make one of the voices fit where it should have come from. Also some of the effects didn’t quite have the intended impact for me, and I didn’t find the characters in this section as engaging narratively.
Chapter 3 – Your Home
The final section was at home and sadly suffered the same environmental issues as the other sections. I’ll happily chalk it down to my lack of imagination, but when half of the voices and effects come from the otherside of a wall it dampens the immersion for me. Obviously if you can suspend your disbelief for things like this then you’re likely to gain more from the experience. Narratively I felt this one dragged and most of the 30ish minutes for the final chapter felt quite confusing. The finale, whilst leaving some items of the three interconnected storylines ambiguous and open to interpretation, didn’t have enough of a payoff for me and so felt a little flat.
On the whole it’s another accomplished production from Darkfield. Technically apart from a couple of non-environmental placement issues it was great. Narratively it didn’t quite work as well as it could have for me. I enjoyed the core concept, but it felt a bit too clever for its own good. That said, I’m still keen to try out whatever Darkfield comes up with next and fingers crossed it will be a proper in-person style performance. Darkfield Radion – Season 2 – Knot runs in the UK until 11th July.
Season 1
Visitors
We’re back in Lockdown so it’s the perfect opportunity to experience Visitors from Darkfield on their Darkfield Radio platform.
Visitors, like all other Darkfield experiences takes place completely through your headphones. It has to be said how the use of sound effects and audio coming from different angles really works well and helps with the immersion.
Visitors itself is best experienced by two people in the same room. We actually experienced it in two separate locations which unfortunately detracted from the experience slightly. Saying this it was still enjoyable though we needed to use our imagination more to conjure up the other person.
You can really see how creepy this experience would be if there were two of you. After discussing the experience afterwards we believe while the experience is essentially the same for both participants you do have slightly different audio.
I liked how the audio got you to move around your space this helped add to the experience and the interaction with the characters in the audio helped too.
The experience while enjoyable doesn’t quite live up to the in person experiences, this is primarily down to not being able to control peoples spaces at home. Though for £5 per person it is absolutely worth a go and something enjoyably eerie to do during the third lockdown.
This series of experiences ends this week so get your ticket while you can over at the Darkfield website.
Double
We recently experienced Double, the first at home experience from Darkfield, the creatives behind Séance, Flight and Coma. Double is an immersive audio experience making use of binaural audio which creates a 3D stereo sound experience.
Like many of the Darkfield experiences that take place in shipping containers this one relied primarily on audio and is designed to be experienced with a partner (while this is advised it can still be enjoyed individually which we will discuss later).
The experience explores the Capgras delusion, a terrifying condition in which the sufferer is convinced that a loved one has been replaced by an exact replica with malign intentions.
Once you have bought a ticket you are told to download an app and enter a unique code. This is all you need to do prior to the event. On the evening of the event you get comfortable with your phone and headphones, sitting at the kitchen table.
As the audio starts and a short sound check is complete you dive into the experience. Firstly, it has to be noted how clear and crisp the audio is. This really helps with the immersion as the audio sounds as if it is coming from the room you are sat in. The 20-minute show then starts.
Sitting, listening and taking one last look at your partner you close your eyes and are whisked away into the world of Double. We will not give away what happens, but the experience manages to create an atmosphere very similar to that experienced in the previous Darkfield shows.
The audio effects are extremely clever and many times throughout as the tension builds you could swear someone had moved, picked up something or even more you were not alone. With Darkfield’s in situ performances as they control the space that you are in the audio works pretty seamlessly with what you know of your environment during their shows. As Double is an ‘at home’ event you’ll need a minor bit of suspension of disbelief when audio appears from places in your own kitchen (or wherever you choose to experience it) that you know won’t physically make any sense. When it does work though, it will feel incredibly immersive and at times more than a little unnerving.
Double has been created to be an experience for a couple sat across the same kitchen table, but it can also be experienced solo if you want. In our experience it didn’t really change too much, obviously some of the narrative doesn’t make sense, but if you make a slight leap of imagination that your thinking of someone close and familiar to you then it still stands up as an experience and the duo element of Double becomes less important as the narrative progresses.
So even if you are only able to do this on your own, it’s still worth doing, just be prepared to suspend a little bit more disbelief than you would need to do anyway if you’re experiencing it as a couple.
Overall Double is a great experience and one that we would recommend on your own or as a couple, and we’re looking forward to seeing what else Darkfield come up with in this new format. Tickets are available at Darkfield Radio starting at £3.50 per person for limited previews, with shows continuing through to the 1st August.
Previous Darkfield Reviews
Séance by Darkfield at Vault Festival 2019 Review
Darkfield – Canary Wharf 2019
