Dan knows everyone there is to know in Motor City, collects nerdy DJ gear and has an astonishing vinyl collection that rivals that of any Radio 1 DJ I have ever worked with. When I first started this recommendation blog I know Dan would be a good person to speak to… He had only one recommendation – the awesome Intergalactic FM.

The universe of Intergalactic FM is an incredible powerhouse of electronic sounds coming from the Netherlands. Not for Hed Kandi crowd (I’m not being snotty, it’s just not your thing), it has four different stations inspired by different vintage eras of dance music.

#1 plays out three generations of electro (think Planet Rock not electrohouse), #2 is ‘disco fetish non-stop’ with Intergalactic Classix (italodisco & Horsemeat Disco-esque 4/4 winners) and #4 plays music for ‘freaks, faggots, punks & junkies’ with a scuzzy rock’n'roll rave slop.

The cherry on top is station #3. ‘The Dream Machine’ is a truly astonishing mix of analogue soundtrack music (for the uninitiated, think Vangelis or Carpenter) and dubbed out, acid-drenched eccentricities. It does what only great music radio can do by transporting you to an unknowable place that is full of drama and inexpressible emotions. It really is the best machine music mix I have ever heard.

Check them all out by clicking on the arrow at the bottom left of this page, or go to the Intergalactic site.

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).

All of which come together in his delightful series of podcasts, ‘The Wreckless Eric Radio Show’. Each lasting (approximately) a zippy half hour and recorded at his base in rural France, they contain a fantastic collection of well picked music, some very entertaining opinions on everything from space travel to the Rolling Stones, and the occasional reading from his (very funny) autobiography ‘A Dysfunctional Success’.

Kevin Coyne, The Velvet Underground, Tony Christie, and Parliament/Funkadelic all make appearances, as do more surprising artists such as Donna Summer and Hot Chocolate. Some shows are themed – the Space Travel one is a fantastic listen  – while others just freewheel through the man’s rather fine record collection. Eric’s got an excellent, understated presentation style, and some hilariously dead pan stories about on stage power cuts and appalling promoters, along with a wide range of bizarre spoken word antique radio jingles and ‘How to set up your stereogramme’ records which are judiciously sprinkled throughout.

He would probably run a mile from any such offer, but this is really what a station like 6Music should be doing, providing a platform for a truly original and talented voice. But they’d rather have George Lamb and Craig Charles. It really does make you weep.

I read a review in The Guardian of NME Radio a few months ago when the station launched. the precis went something like this – ‘kinda nice, but why do you need that when you have the internet (Spotify / Hype Machine / etc)?’ My experience of the station is the exact opposite. I have an unhealthy love of music on the internet and I am also a horrendous music snob. Which should mean that I hate NME radio. But actually it’s dead good.

Avoiding the internet Vs radio debate, let’s set the scene. It is very difficult to recommend anything from UK morning radio (pirates aside). If you actually like music, commercial radio is almost unbearable (Ricky & Melvin would be aaaight were it not for the blow-your-brains-out-Soulja Boy selections, but Dr Fox? Jamie Theakston? They make me want to slice off my ears). The BBC on the other hand is obviously grrrreat in the mornings, but the shows are 100% F.U.L.L. Jammed with listeners on-air, superfluous content, endless features, trails for other nonsense, every minute sounds like it is their last. Even the occasionally charming 6 Music breakfast (NME’s closest rival) has four features an hour, a flabby music news, a cosmologist and an increasingly bizarre constellation of guests. It’s all TOO MUCH.

NME Radio obviously has no cash. Which means no big production teams, no whimsical features, no window dressing. It sounds like this is because no one is really advertising on it yet, which for the listener is an unexpected boon. The presenters are great but only really expected to deliver the essentials – you get the weather, music news headlines and tonight’s gigs (like XFM did back in the day).

There are some pretty good tunes. While they do lean a bit heavy on the lobotomizing sounds of The Enemy and Oasis, this week I heard the new Radiohead download only single, The Horrors and some Ride without interruption. While the DJ’s can be a bit hospital radio, I would rather listen to enthusiastic amateurism than oil-slick professionalism any morning of the week. And some of the talent – especially indie queen Samanthi – are actually dead good (the worst are the ones that they have nicked off other stations).

Perversely the very reason DAB is a bit pony is why NME works. I have a DAB in my kitchen; it beats my Internet radio hands down for two reasons: because it turns straight on and because it has less choice… sometimes you just want to turn a dial through a few options and pick something. NME on DAB (only in London I’m afraid) means that it is the best of a very wordy bunch. It is musical wallpaper that does the essentials really well and for that it’s my new breakfast station. Listen here.

One note. There is also an iPhone app for the station. I have absolutely no idea how they can charge 59p for this heavily branded, ad-heavy thing that essentially connects you to the internet, but I admire their balls.

Jon Langford of The Mekons

I have been meaning to post this fifteen minute clip for a little while (it was broadcast in early summer). This American Life isn’t really our stock and trade, but as this clip has a musical theme I thought it deserves a mention here.

The feature is taken from one of The American Life’s Classified specials, where all of the content from the show is harvested from one day’s classified ads in the local Chicago papers. Here Jon Langford of The Mekons puts together a band of never met before musicians for a rendition of a classic tune.

There are lots of things I really like about this clip: the narrator’s amazing Dawson’s-Creek-meets-Juno delivery, the theremin player that likes to amaze people and then spurn their fawning adoration, but the cherry on top is reserved for the violin player who is in anger management. Have a listen.

The American Life—Band For One Day

Dennis Brown

This week we are two contributors to BDAW down with the dreaded parmageddon that is swine-flu. I’ve personally got man-flu, but I can sense through the glands that things could turn nasty. My imminent demise however did have a silver lining in that it led me to be around on a Wednesday night to check out one of my favourite radio shows—the 50 50 Soundsystem on Resonance FM. 

I have very few appointments to listen in my life, but if I’m in, this show is always on. I know little about 50 50 other that the music that they play is so spiritual it makes the two hours of broadcast involuntarily propel me into a communion with my maker. Dusty roots 45’s sit next to a cappella chants, sirens and moans to make a collage of sounds that when I close my eyes feels like my idea of a perfect church. This is mystery and wonder timed to perfection.

50 50 don’t podcast or archive their shows, but I’ve got a feeling that I might start doing it myself right here (…if you are already on it let me know!) This is, besides the joy that is Jonny Trunk, the best show on Resonance and one of the best listens anywhere on the dial. Milo Lapis, Jah Beef and crew are the most humble, understated of DJ’s, but their selections and craft are top drawer. 

Cheeky bootlegs coming soon, but if—like me—you are owned by Google, you can sync the Resonance running order to Google calenders here to remind yourself when to stay home and tune in.

Digital Mystikz’ ‘B’ is the first dubstep record I ever bought and the first dubstep record I fell in love with.  Mala was the man who made it, the man who was and still is utterly instrumental within the genre and, arguably, without him dubstep would lack much of its musical soul.  He’s a big thinker, a quiet talker, a genuine gem; I had high hopes for this hour-long journey with the legend himself through his streets and sights and sounds of his London via Red Bull Radio.

The programme kicks off with Mala back in his childhood ends of Norwood and runs through some of his earlier musical memories & local hang outs.  He rattles around a couple of record shops and south London markets and winds up in Forest Hill, where he gets technical about cutting dubplates.  He plays us a few of his favourite tunes, old and new, we meet some of his collaborators, he tells us how cool Red Bull Academy is etc. etc. etc.……Ok, so I’m a huge fan and I know a fair bit about Mala already, but given that he’s such a central figure in such an urban scene, even my Nan could’ve guessed that he probably used to listen to pirate radio in his room, that he hung out in Croydon at Big Apple Records and that Blackmarket is something of a spiritual home to him.   Quite frankly, Wikipedia could’ve done the job.

Look, there are bits of this programme I loved- Mala on the phone to Coki and the subsequent chat with his long time friend and label mate, the nods to fellow Londoners Jehst & Roots Manuva, the bits about him using every penny of his overtime money on that precious first cut of a track.  I get that it has to be about Mala’s connection with London, but I just felt that this programme didn’t entirely do him justice.  A lot of the time, there’s little link with what he’s talking about and the music in the background.  Who were his favourite artists growing up?  Which nights did he go to?  Where in London did he meet his fellow dubsteppers?   Where did he work before he made it?  There’s not even a mention of Brixton, the home of his DMZ night- the biggest dubstep event in the capital, which is rammed to capacity every month.

You very much get the impression that London is something of a disappointment to him, not somewhere he feels totally at home.  At one point he says that he in no way feels patriotic to its cityscape and grey concrete, but that it probably has shaped him.  And maybe that’s the problem.  Get him on the topic of music and he’s away, talk to him about his current locale and he has less to say.  However, for the tracks played along the way, for Mala’s insights into dubstep’s evolution and to get a beginner’s guide to where it all began, you still need to tune into this.  Personally, I’d just like to skip to the sequel.

Say you’d decided that for your staycation this year you were off to the Lake District, Ambleside to be precise.  You’d packed your picnic rug, put the dog in the car & landed up there at some point on a Friday evening.  You check into your b&b and it’s all really green and countrified and you’re really starting to feel like you’re getting away from the grind.  You wake up the next morning and the birds are singing and you think that obviously what you need is a fat fry up to start the day.  You spot the delightful looking Daisy’s Café just over the road, it’s got really pretty net curtains and hanging baskets outside and so you drag the fam over there, walk in the door and WHAM….you’re surrounded by beardy weirdos ravin it up in white gloves to a futuristic soundtrack of Aphex proportions.

This is how I imagine Rob Booth- originally of the West Country via London and now proprietor of said Daisy Café- gets down on a daily basis.  In his spare time away from baking scones & serving Earl Grey to the rambling fraternity of the Lake District, Rob is an underground soldier of a rare variety.  At the last count he’s on the 75th edition of Electronic Explorations (the latest featuring Kid 606), his show that explores some of the most experimental electronic beats & artists that don’t get enough love elsewhere.

Clocking in at two hours, it’s an absolute labour of love on his part- I mean how do you keep in touch with the latest grime techno while chatting to grannies about their dead cats?  The BPM’s rarely drop below 140 and you can expect everything from acid to ragga to minimal tinted tech from the likes of Planet Mu, Rag & Bone and Surface Tension, plus he puts together mini podcasts for the shows and you can either stream them or download the file.  Yeah, ok, his presenting style is more West Country train announcer than hyped up youth vibes, but he loves what he plays and that counts.  His guests (Akira Kiteshi, Optika Technika & Syntheme) represent via mixes throughout the show and this is where it gets really clever.  Not only do they mash together some mad beats- Lee Perry, Girls Aloud & sounds from bearded seals a mile underneath the Arctic, in the latest case- but they also intro all the tracks as they’re coming in, giving us an insight into why they’re there.  Annoying?  You might think so, but it actually works.

There are shows out there that could do this, should do this, but none that succeed in quite the same wonky way and that’s why Electronic Explorations is a winner.  Maybe it’s all that fresh air.  Whatever. If you too would like to witness Rob frantically whipping cream to a mental Milanese-style soundtrack, you can find him here-

Daisy’s Cafe
Ambleside
CUMBRIA
LA22 9BS

Otherwise, just tune into the show and I’m sure you’ll get the picture.

Newbit.

The Breezeblock was a radio show on BBC Radio 1 a few years ago, a mix show for freaks late at night hungry for electronic music. The show featured a bunch of different DJs and producers from Matmos to Bjork, but Jace Clayton AKA DJ Rupture always occupied a very special place in the show’s pantheon of pornographically good knob-twiddlers.  A firm favourite of John Peel, he was The Breezeblock’s daddy.

What Rupture has always done exceptionally well is play stupid music for clever people, and mix it up with clever sounds for those who want it stupid. Sure, a lot of it is electronic with beeps and bass, but he manages to keep a live, analogue, human feel to proceedings that is all his own.

DJ Rupture’s radio show, Mudd Up is available on WFMU and on iTunes as a podcast. If one week’s isn’t enough you can go to his show page where every single show is archived complete with guest information and playlists. Fellow BDAW’s blogger Matt put me on to the show and I can safely say it is the most surprising and rewarding music podcast I currently subscribe to.

Mudd Up! is made with a lot of love. Guests frequently pop up from all continents and disciplines (musicians, poets and more) and the show is full of genuine exclusives. Jace describes his musical sweep as ‘Cumbia. Dubstep. Gangsta synthetics. Sound-art. Maghrebi’, but in reality this is a DJ without respect for fashion, with a thorough disdain of musical genre, audience demographics or conventional broadcasting norms.

Rupture creates sound collages of mystery and drama that consistantly challenge every synapse in my brain. Subscribe immediately.

You know what the big problem is with radio interviews? You’ve heard it all before. Usually the guest is doing the rounds to plug their latest product, so they’re on the promo carousel, and will, this very same week, be appearing on five other stations near you. And even if the show has managed to wangle an exclusive interview on a subject you’re interested in, the presenter will follow the approved route; talk about stuff the guest is well known for, talk about stuff they’ve been doing recently, talk about their new product. If this is Tuesday, it must be Bono. Thursday, we’ve got Tom Cruise. And on, and on…

Thankfully for the adventurous internet surfer, there are alternatives.

The Sound Of Young America is, in the words of its host Jesse Thorn ‘A radio show about things that are awesome’.  But then, Jesse bills himself as ‘America’s Radio Sweetheart’, and revels in the lofi production, getting listeners to intro the show over the phone, and proclaiming at the top of each show that it’s ‘live on tape from my home in Los Angeles’. So I think we can safely assume tongues are planted firmly in cheeks.

TSOYA is unique in that it a) books guests that are interesting, even if you’ve never heard of them before, and b) then goes on to have a really good time with them. Recently Lloyd Kaufmann, the completely hatstand head of lo-budget schlock factory Troma Films, came on the show to claim that he was the best producer ever. Thorn was actually falling about laughing at Kaufmann’s ridiculous chutzpah, and it made for a fantastic interview.

I go weeks on end without listening to TSOYA because I don’t recognise the names that come up on the list on my iPod, but then after being lured in by a name or act I recognise, I gorge again – three or four editions in a day.  Jesse’s presenting style is addictive like that.

The guest list ranges from actors, including Bunk and Bubbles from The Wire, and musicians – from the reclusive and legendary Betty Davis to underground rappers – to writers, such as ‘The IT Crowd’s Graham Linehan and comics writer Brian Michael Bendis, the man who’s been charged with recreating Spiderman for Marvel comics.

However, Thorn’s main love is comedy, in all its forms. Films, TV, books and stand up, plus some others that I haven’t heard yet. From big Hollywood names to US circuit stars who haven’t broken in the UK, they all get love from TSOYA. Which is nice (for them), and also good for listeners, who get to hear some really funny people doing what they do best, which is be funny.  Go on, have a laugh.

Much like many of you, in the morning all of my radios are tuned to different stations. The kitchen flops between Radio 4, Radio 1 and 1Xtra (what else do you listen to on a DAB over breakfast?); the bathroom, waterproof and FM/AM, does the pirates (dancehall being the audio equivalent of Nivea Sport for Men – waking you up with a start) and upstairs the most recent addition to the family, an Intempo digital number, goes all over the place.

Over the last couple of months though, as I throw on my clothes in the morning I have checking out .977 The Comedy that also goes by the name of Comedy 104. Whether by design or accident, this station has the privilege of being the first of the 86 stations in the ‘Comedy’ genre on my radio, and as such was the first one to be given a go. Since then I have pretty much skimmed through all of the comedy stations (including several that sound like they are recorded at the wrong end of the night in an Austrian bierkeller) and .977 is still probably the most reliable of the jukebox comedy options.

I like my comedy straight up, not-messed-about-with, but I do appreciate that comedy radio provokes a very large range of reactions (my other half can’t stand comedy jukebox radio). What .977 does is give you 3 minute chunks of the world’s best stand-ups (and Jasper Carrot) telling a few jokes. Then it cuts immediately to another stand-up and the cycle continues until the end of time. Contributions are 90% American (thank the Lord) and on any given morning you might hear, as I did today, the likes of Bill Hicks, Richard Pryor and the overlord of comedy – Jerry Seinfeld.

Sometimes the contributions err a bit towards the US’s equivalent of Jethro or Freddie Starr (‘aren’t men and women different?’, ‘anyone else here like beer?’ etc) but you are generally only 5 minutes away from someone with a brain. There is no censorship or mediation whatsoever which can make for pretty uncomfortable listening when segueing from Radio 4 in the kitchen.

A station like this can only have a short listening lifespan: as I am quickly discovering people who listen to a lot of stand-up soon become jaded, hearing the familiar patterns again and again. Also, I have no idea how they are getting the rights to this stuff (I’m not sure how E4 radio with its comedy remit would have existed with international comedy talent 24/7 on the same dial) but for the time being I will still be surfing this station and others like it to get my morning fix of slander and willy jokes.

Check out .977 here.

DJ Scratcha: The Grimey Breakfast on Rinse FM

This is still work in progress, but Scratcha makes me laugh A LOT. Scratcha does ‘The Grimey Breakfast’ on the absolutely incredible Rinse FM. A lot has been written about Rinse all over the web—it is the home of so many of the best black music heads in the UK at the moment including Roll Deep, Skream / Zinc and Benga, Boy Better Know and Plastician—but not enough people have been shouting about the weekday 8-11 slot. 

Some things work, and some things go on way too long, but when it’s right it’s very right. Often in a very wrong way. Recent features include a summer special where listeners split up with their girlfriends / boyfriends on air (because you don’t want to have a girlfriend in the summer right?), and this morning was a phone in about the perils of ‘going down’ for both girls and boys. Eat that Terry. 

The music is amazing (kinda like a really upfront 1Xtra breakfast minus lame R’n'b plus some killer underground hits), and—without getting all grown up on it—it’s really good to hear a show that hasn’t been neutered in the age of compliance and censorship where young people can talk how they talk.

As he says ‘it’s breakfast—start your day with a nice white pearly smile’. Wow. 

Check Rinse on their website, or listen to the podcasts here (Scratcha comes round pretty regularly).

Ross Allen

Firstly, in the interests of full disclosure I need to make it clear that Ross Allen is a mate, and we worked together back in the last century on GLR, when I produced his ‘Destination In’ evening show.

However, if I had no knowledge of the man and his curious taste in quality knitwear, I think I’d still be flagging up his latest radio incarnation. Hailing from the eclectic end of Dance Music Boulevard, The Meltdown’s content is pretty much dependent on the mood Ross is in when he hits the studio, the music that’s excited him while he’s been playing out that week, and the MP3’s and white label CD’s he’s been passed while out and about in nightclubs far and wide across the globe.

Managing to play a mix of exclusive super cool previews, current leftfield remixes and classic old tunes without coming over (like some radio DJ’s we could mention) as trying too hard, there’s always a sense of the crate digging fan boy about Ross’s presentation. It’s a feeling that he’s playing the music because he loves it, and he wants the listener to love it as well. Combined with the ability not to take himself too seriously, it makes The Meltdown one of the most enjoyable shows on the Ministry platform. Hell, one of the most enjoyable on radio, period.

Ross Allen – The Meltdown, Ministry Of Sound Radio Monday nights 6-8pm GMT  and listen again.

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.

Sunday’s get me in a radio funk. As a child I loathed the kitchen radio’s blend of big bands and crooners coming from Radio 2 (the musical equivalent of Sunday roast sprouts for a twelve year old), and, although I like Elaine Page (she sounds like she’d be fun after a couple of bottles of wine) there is only so many show tunes I can handle before I go into toxic shock. Unless it’s Jesus Christ Superstar, in which case, bring it on.

In the absence of any genuine alternatives I have cast my Sunday lunch net a little wider. At present I’m listening to Sonzera Pura while I get the grub ready. At the all new seasonally adjusted time of 1-3pm GMT this show comes out of East Village Radio in New York first thing in the morning.

Sonzera Pura are a duo that rep ‘the best of brazil in NY’. The show takes in all styles of Brazilian music…  samba and bossa but also psych, electronics and new stuff. Not too much chat, but obviously a lot of love goes into it… full tracklistings always, plus this week had 3 different guests including a chap called DJ Jeremy who played a lot of tropicalia—that most absurd and wonderful music made by people wearing capes playing the happiest sounds imaginable whilst on drugs that no one takes any more. 

Check the show live on East Village Radio between 1 and 3 on a Sunday, or listen to the station from this page below.

[audio http://www.eastvillageradio.com:8010/evr]