Bio and CV

Biography

Olivia Bradley-Skill is an interdisciplinary sound and radio artist, presenter, music director, and educator. She is a curious and passionate sound-seeker, whose work spans through live radio performance, recording, sound design, and audio collage. She works at freeform radio station WFMU as the station’s music director. In that role, she is in charge of maintaining the station’s extensive library, adding new releases, and a slate of other random tasks that come up at small radio stations with a tiny office staff. She creates intimate, immersive radio portraits weekly on her WFMU radio show “Radio Ravioli”, and has also partnered with The Wire, Radio Art Zone, WGXC/ Wave Farm, The Lot Radio, Radiophrenia, Constellations Audio, and Earlid. Olivia Bradley-Skill has performed and hosted workshops at Union Docs, The Salt Institute for Documentary Studies, Fridman Gallery, Podcast Maker Livestream, Megapolis, and On Air Fest. As a professional DJ, she has hosted a variety of events. She also does sound design for documentary and podcast.

Audio Works

2018-present: Host of Radio Ravioli, an immersive, genre-fluid three-hour program that prioritizes experimentation, creativity, live performance, and conversation.

2020-present: Curator for Radio Row, a weekly guest slot on WFMU, which highlights different DJs/audio experiments both locally and around the globe. This effort diversifies WFMU’s airwaves and focuses on music aficionados / artists with little to no radio background, BIPOC, women,LGBTIA+, and folks playing underrepresented genres/music.

2019-present: Host of The Secret Harmony, a podcast that started as a “show within a show” on Radio Ravioli. It features creative, bite-sized sound sketches and audio collages. Stream wherever you stream podcasts.

2023

WFMU, Radio Ravioli, Conversation with Kate NV
Olivia welcomes Moscow-based artist Kate NV, who creates bouncy, bright, and weird synthpop full of whimsy and surprises, for an hour of music and conversation. In between songs, they talk about embracing imperfections, vulnerability, and weirdness.

WFMU, Radio Ravioli, Conversation with Linda Smith and Nancy Andrews
Linda Smith and Nancy Andrews join Olivia in studio to play records and talk about them. They share stories about influential artists, their decades long friendship, and their new record, released on Grapefruit.

2022

WFMU, Radio Ravioli, Conversation with Jill Kroesen
Olivia welcomes artist Jill Kroesen, who has produced a number of radio plays, produced the cult album Stop Vicious Cycles on Lovely Music, exhibited at The Whitney, and has a new music compilation called I Really Want To Bomb You out on Modern Harmonic, for three hours of music and conversation about her life and career.

WFMU, Radio Ravioli, HALLOWEEN, HAUNTED SPIRITS, HAUNTOLOGY, AND KOT KOT
A Halloween-Special Ravioli featuring original sound collage, an interview with musician Kot Kot (who describes her work as akin to “hauntology”), and haunted spirits and ghosts.

Radio Art Zone, Ceremonies of a Commuter, 22 hour radio piece commissioned by Radio Art Zone, a 100-day radio art station for Esch2022 that broadcasts in the south of Luxembourg by Radio ARA on 87.8 FM and online. Ceremonies of a Commuterplays on the idea of a soundwalk. It consists of recordings taken on the way to work, work being freeform radio station WFMU, and the way being a walk of roughly 30 minutes. The broadcast meditates on 3 main themes: (1) what it means to record, (2) walking as an activity, and (3) finding creativity in the mundane realities of daily life.

DIG: A HOLE TO PUT YOUR GRIEF IN | Sound Design for Documentary Film

WFMU, Radio Ravioli, A Conversation with Karina Gill

Olivia welcomes Karina Gill (of the bands Cindy and Flowertown) for a quick conversation about how “being good at things” in the conventional way can get in the way, how special a community can be for music, and how making music isn’t rocket science – in fact, some of the best music is the simplest.

2021

Artists-in-Presidents: Transmissions to Power | Sound Design/Mixing for Podcast

WFMU, Radio Ravioli, A Conversation with Robin Hatch
Olivia welcomes Canadian composer Robin Hatch for an open, kind interview about about her journey to sobriety, her PTSD from sexual abuse, how she “trauma dumps” into her music, and how she works through creative blocks.

WFMU, Radio Ravioli, Alien Heart
A sound collage about misfits, outsiders, or aliens for all the weirdos out there, plus collected songs and sounds about extraterrestrials and outer space.

WFMU, Radio Ravioli, A Conversation with Colleen
Olivia welcomes musician Colleen for a frank interview about her latest album and her journey into singing, with and without formal training.

Better World, A Collaboration with James T. Green

Events, Workshops, Lectures

2023

Rhizome / Dunkunsthalle, I am on the Internet IRL, Listening Party | NYC

The Salt Institute for Documentary Studies, How To Use Music To Set The Scene, 3 Week Intensive | Virtual

2022

UnionDocs, “Riding the Wave(forms): Process-Oriented Audio Creation”, 3 Day In-Person Workshop | NYC

The Salt Institute for Documentary Studies, Guest Lecture on Sound Collage/Design | Virtual

2021

The Salt Institute for Documentary Studies, Guest Lecture on Sound Collage/Design | Virtual

2020

Podcast Maker Livestream, “Stories are good, but do you need them?”Presentation | Virtual

UnionDocs, Guest Lecture on Audio Collage | Virtual

2019

WFMU, Plants and Synths, Live concert featuring a fruit “piano” (touch different fruits to trigger different notes), an amplified cactus, modular synthesizer electronics by Greg Fox, and Yuka C. Honda will be playing a short electronics set with Kahimi Karie playing tuning fork, followed by a set of ON/IN a duo band that Yuka has with Akio Mokuno.