25 years and one generation on from the end of WWII, 1970 is Jahr Null / Year Zero.

Israel, September 8: a month of plane hijacking begins, known as Black September. Three airliners are hijacked and blown up by Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. 

This is one instance in a year of terror. 70 terror groups are established in 1970, significantly more than any year before or since in the 20th century*. In affluent West Germany the Red Army Faction is established (to be known informally as the Baader Meinhof Gang). 

In south London a five year old boy looks at the walnut valve radio in his father’s room. Forbidden to touch the bakelite dials, he reads the illuminated place names. Wildly exotic locations: Cologne, Brazzaville, Sofia, Hilversum, Riga, Bratislava, Moscow, Havana, Tapei, Anchorage, Vatican City, Leipzig. The broadcasters speak in a ‘received pronunciation’ that belies the chaos their news reports.

In Cologne, white collar terrorists Baader Meinhof demand ‘an absolute break with the past and a radical new beginning’ as they enact a programme of bombings, assassinations, kidnappings and bank robberies. In Düsseldorf, three friends called Ralph, Florian and Conny set up a studio to bounce new sounds off the ionosphere.

* Journal of Conflict Resolution 2020, Vol. 64(1) 199-225

Technical Notes

The original sound recording is a Radio Jordan news broadcast from Switzerland, 8 September, 1970.

An EMS VCS3 and Moog vocoder were used for this sound work.