The evolution of online Radio
SPlDEY
Vegas 3,375 Posts
While everybody is stuck inside and quarantined, do us all a solid, and share some of your favorite Online Radio Stations and maybe a little bit about what you like about them. I'll start:
I remember when there wasn't many online radio stations to choose from. Podcasting was a thing, but there weren't many good podcasts. Winamp had a ton of amateur streamers with questionable music taste. As all things grow I am pleasantly surprised with the quality of Online Radio stations nowadays.
When I was in Brasil I made good friends with a guy named Bertrand. He told me about an online radio stations that he is a part of in Paris called Le Mellotron. You have a very eclectic cast of European musicians and DJ's serving up all kinds of rare and interesting music. It's been beautiful to watch it evolve into a lovely little bar and cafe. You'll see some familiar names on the site, and also discover a bunch of up and coming producers.
Here's the site: https://www.lemellotron.com/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exDNzPfNW5Y
https://www.mixcloud.com/LeMellotron/bagogrooves-15/
Keep it going y'all. Hip me to that new new good good.
- Diagonal
I remember when there wasn't many online radio stations to choose from. Podcasting was a thing, but there weren't many good podcasts. Winamp had a ton of amateur streamers with questionable music taste. As all things grow I am pleasantly surprised with the quality of Online Radio stations nowadays.
When I was in Brasil I made good friends with a guy named Bertrand. He told me about an online radio stations that he is a part of in Paris called Le Mellotron. You have a very eclectic cast of European musicians and DJ's serving up all kinds of rare and interesting music. It's been beautiful to watch it evolve into a lovely little bar and cafe. You'll see some familiar names on the site, and also discover a bunch of up and coming producers.
Here's the site: https://www.lemellotron.com/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exDNzPfNW5Y
https://www.mixcloud.com/LeMellotron/bagogrooves-15/
Keep it going y'all. Hip me to that new new good good.
- Diagonal
TAGGED:
Comments
Soho Radio in London seems like a similar thing to Le Mellotron. It's a little shopfront in Soho next to the primary school (yes there's a primary school in Soho). It used to just be a coffee shop with a DJ booth behind it but now hosts pop-ups for different labels - BBE, Wah Wah 45s, etc. in the front room, but through the glass even from the street you can still always see the live studio and whatever and whoever's on. They have regular shows from Shawn Lee, Jonathan More from Coldcut, lots of cool stuff going on there all the time. I like to walk by and spy on whoever's in there. I have no idea how they pay the rent.
nts.live
NTS is another streaming radio station out of East London - it's gotten a lot of mainstream attention and has had some big acts come on and do guest sets etc. It's kind of like... like a "cool office" will have probably BBC6 radio playing in its open plan area, but a "hipster office" will have NTS. That makes it sound kind of insufferable but there's been some very cool stuff on it. E.g. this mix of live dancehall recordings from cassettes:
https://www.nts.live/shows/death-is-not-the-end/episodes/death-is-not-the-end-26-08-17
I hope streams of actual radio stations isn't too off-topic. I like streaming college radio stations from back home:
kalx.berkeley.edu - UC Berkeley's station, home of legends like Billy Jam, Matthew Africa, too many to name...
kzsu.stanford.edu - Stanford's station, equally historic (Dollar Bin!)
http://kfjc.org/ KFJC.org - Foothill Junior College, yes! The dark horse of Bay Area radio stations, probably has the weirdest stuff overall. I remember a long running pirate themed kids show called Skull Time for Kids where the hosts would put on Long John Silver accents the whole time and never break character while playing childrens book records and shit. They do vinyl-only days, a "Day of Noise" which is exactly what you think, 24 hours of noise. 24 hours of James Brown May 3rd, appropriately called "Doin' It To Death". I'm unsure if they still do the Day of the Sun (Sun Ra tribute) but damn.
kpfa.org Berkeley free speech radio - Has two shows in particular I was always into - History of Funk still running after like at least two decades? Maybe more? And Negativland's late night live collage show Over The Edge, which has been running since 1981 and blew my mind about what samples could do when I was a wee hip hop head thinking Prince Paul was the pinnacle. It's insane they did this in the early 80s, it's kind of still insane to listen to now. It is a three hour freeform live sample collage performed on broadcast cart machines - like looped 8-track looking things, with live unscreened call-ins from nocturnal freaks with their own setups hooked to their phones.
Live radio, internet or not, is amazing to me when it's a non-commercial endeavor and it's just a handful of people and some basic equipment and a shitload of music filling 24 hours a day somehow. It's still magical to me in a way that podcasts and mp3 mixes aren't, even if you can micro-target your exact genre taste before clicking a mixcloud play button or whatever.
http://radio.garden/
radio streams from anywhere on earth... there is some amazing stuff out there.And okay, if you ever played "Jet Set Radio/Jet Grind Radio" on Dreamcast, or "Jet Set Radio Future" on Xbox, the ones where you rollerblade and write graffiti, you know how those games had kinda rad soundtracks and like a real distinctive Shibuya/hip-hop aesthetic and stuff? Some superfan has put together basically a real-world version of the in-game radio station that narrates those games, with spoken bumpers that sound like he found the original voice actor(??). All the way down to the legal disclaimer not to write graffiti.
So the music is like themed "stations" for each skater gang that featured in the games - not just the OSTs, but just stuff "inspired" by the games' vibe, and the vibes of the individual characters. Absurd. Plus other mad shit like an in-character news ticker, a TV stream and an online graffiti wall. I stumbled across this when I wanted to replay the game, and I sort of think it's the ultimate act of fandom. You could theoretically skate around, streaming this station into your headphones, and painting graffiti like those games fantasized. Until you got killed by a bus or cops, at least.
https://jetsetradio.live/
in terms pf public/college radio, ciut still has higher ground (jason palma) on thursday nights from 8-10pm EST, which has been tite since i was in high school (he puts tracklists up on fb), and i've been getting back into j-rocc's adventures in stereo on friday nights from 8-10pm EST - kpfk archives the last two weeks here: https://www.kpfk.org/on-air/adventures-in-stereo-with-j-rocc/ and there are usually tracklists posted for each show
Favourite this year has been https://www.radio.d59b.com/
Based in Belgrade, Serbia, of all places but always seems to be something interesting playing and they have a big collection of shows in Soundcloud format to revisit. They used to record the video live from the station so you could see the crates, but I guess that ate server space quickly.
Some killer reccomendations KE-TB, Thank you brotha! My good friend Maria recently turned me onto NTS, and I have been super surprised with the eclectic tastes of the DJ's on this station. What I really love is how convenient and easy to use their NTS radio app is to use on my phone 2 clicks, and I'm in. The Soho Radio London site takes a long time to load for me, and the Soho Radio Player doesn't work on my computer. I click Enter Site > Shows > Then it allows me to hit the pre-recorded sets that are on Mixcloud. Kind of a bummer.
- spidey
https://radiooooo.com/
Now we're getting to my favorite stations! I'm so glad you mentioned this Yemsky. Radiooooo.com proves that there is lots of beautiful music all over the world that you have never heard of. I've found so many great artist from this radio station, and it is one of my most listened to Radio stations.
If you've never played around with this site or app. I can highly recommend giving it a test spin, and finding out for yourself. You can go the curated playlist route. You can click on a country and an era and go to town. Also there is a whole interactive element to this where you can login and give them recommendations that I haven't fully explored yet. They don't really delve too far into GENRE, and that's debatebly not necessary for the purpose of this app. However, it would be good to be able to narrow down to specific genre's such as US Soul music from the 1960's. If you have some time to kill and an open mind. You will find something valuable.
" Radiooooo is like a kind of sound museum where new pieces always pop up. On the other hand, no button allows you to give into the temptation to skip... You always need to be curious!" - Benjamin Moreau
The last time we posted about these guys they pulled a Salma Hayek. https://community.soulstrut.com/discussion/69316/
So, if you see this post. Hey dudes, thanks for the great tunes!
- spidey
- Diagonal
Ha, I forgot that I had discovered it via the Strut!