20 Years × 180 Minutes

In April 2023, Crónica was invited to celebrate its twenty years of ongoing activity at Rádio Eira — eira.osso.pt — a project by the OSSO collective that broadcasts on FM for the local communities of São Gregório and Caldas da Rainha, Portugal. The first hour of the broadcast was devoted to a conversation between OSSO’s Ricardo Jacinto and Nuno Morão and Crónica’s Miguel Carvalhais and Pedro Tudela, a talk focused on the label’s activity and on collaborating, curating and publishing experimental music and sound art in an ever-changing context. Carvalhais and Tudela then led a three-hour live broadcast that revisited each of the more than 200 releases in Crónica’s catalogue.

This mix was more than a walk down memory lane. Taking each year of Crónica’s history as a unit, it developed an archaeology of the label: a retrospective, critical look that framed every release in its chronological context while also trying to understand it in the present. It was a look at the past with sights set on the future: continuing to publish, help produce and distribute new music.

The final track was updated in September 2023 to include all of that year’s releases.

Acknowledgements

Crónica would like to thank OSSO and Rádio Eira, Ricardo Jacinto and Nuno Morão, and to acknowledge the work of all the artists who have collaborated with Crónica since 2003.