College


22
Dec 09

Texas knows what time it is: KVRX 91.7FM

Ok so I’m extraordinarily late to meet my girlfriend so this is very much a flying visit. I have spent 6 hours today listening to a station I have never heard before.

KVRX is the station for Austin, Texas. I picked it because I thought, y’know, Austin is so painfully wonderful that I thought the station security wouldn’t let you within 200 metres of the mixing desk unless you had the most immaculate record collection ever to grace human ears. And, true to form, it has been 6 hours of bliss.

Perhaps I am missing something (does everyone go home in the holidays?) but no one seems to speak on this station, even though it says the names of the DJ’s on the website that are spinning. No talking suited me just fine today, and every single record was absolutely incredible, from blinding garage rock to chanson, the right hip bands to Lata Mangeshkar… everything was juuuussst right.

Whilst having a nose around their site it seems they do a whole bunch of other stuff like live filmed sessions, and regular spots for Austin bands. So yep, well played Texas. Give it a go the next time you want a bit of ambient brain food (you can listen here or on iTunes).


4
Apr 09

The Afternoon Show (…In The Evening)

grouper

grouper

A short post for you today. I love most things American and independent musically… once upon a time the place to hear anything from Matmos to Mice Parade was on BBC Radio 3’s Mixing It, or (in the case of electronics) Mary Anne Hobbs’ Breezeblock, and of course in the excellent Wire radio shows (surely the subject of a forthcoming post).

Now I have discovered that the ultimate independent record shop trolley dash of a radio show comes from WNYU out of New York (the station that also broadcasts ‘Beats In Space‘).

They bill it as ‘three and a half hours a day of pure, unadulterated, adventurous New Sounds’, and it works absolutely perfectly at the time zone adjusted UK time of 9pm-12.30am. The hosts Kayla and Jonathan and unobtrusive but totally on it, and the music they serve up is completely compelling.

Now that we have Spotify for all the major label stuff out there, the only releases that remain hard to track down are the independent stuff. The Afternoon Show makes this work reachable for those of us who can’t get our geek on at Rough Trade on a daily basis.

The picture above is for an artist called Grouper that they introduced me too this week. It’s swoonfully badass, as were five or six other records from the same show.