Urban75 Home About Offline BrixtonBuzz Contact

London pirate radio - news and discussion

Haringey First London Borough to Kill Off Pirate Radio

This seems to be the increasing change of tact being taken by Ofcom and housing associations. I think Ofcom have realised that taking stations off air only for them to usually get themselves back within days (or sometimes hours) is possibly a fruitless task on its own (and the propaganda war doesn't really seem to be effective) and so therefore directing enforcement money into securing and monitoring blocks better working with associations instead is more likely to hit stations hardest.

I'm not convinced by Haringey's claim that they've 'killed off pirate radio across the borough' though.
 
Rinse is down for a second day on my dial.... I know not a pirate any more but still...

Btw can't stop listening to house fm this year... Have thought this for a while but in my opinion is the best pirate station in that, always on, best signal, best sound quality, never a bad dj, no stupid talking, very professional attitude, good jingles, not too much adverts, and I think classy music too.
 
Last edited:
stethoscope said:
Haringey First London Borough to Kill Off Pirate Radio

This seems to be the increasing change of tact being taken by Ofcom and housing associations. I think Ofcom have realised that taking stations off air only for them to usually get themselves back within days (or sometimes hours) is possibly a fruitless task on its own (and the propaganda war doesn't really seem to be effective) and so therefore directing enforcement money into securing and monitoring blocks better working with associations instead is more likely to hit stations hardest.

I'm not convinced by Haringey's claim that they've 'killed off pirate radio across the borough' though.
Click to expand...

I don't think boroughs will need to kill pirate radio in the longrun, sad to say.

It seems that a lot of new youngsters are gravitating to stations like Radar Radio these days, which can't really be called pirates in the way we know it.

As an a-side Radar Radio is also run by Ollie Ashley (Mike Ashley's son) so there's something to be said for that. Obviously ethical capitalism is a myth and all but if radar bankrupts itself it will be interesting to see the rebranding that takes place. I think a lot of young people simply don't care for pirate radio much these days and don't really mind if their exposure is essentially bankrolled by business tycoons. There's an argument to be made that this will exclude marginalised communities or prevent online urban radio from becoming more inclusive.

NTS is a different proposition entirely but that's more like a WFMU than any sort of pirate. It has much more of a conoisseur/conscious crowd - I prefer NTS to Radar but then again I am a snob.

I think pirate radio is more likely to live on in diaspora communities, Turkish, Ghanaian, etc. But again one has to wonder how much of that is appealing to old political sentiments.
 
I was reading an article the other day where it said the average age for those involved in pirates tend to be around 30+, and even if the listenership might stretch younger, I think there's something in that tbh. Thinking about it, all those people I know involved in playing on or running pirates are in their thirties or forties so pirate radio probably is no longer the youth movement that it became for the last 20 years. I know I and my mates were in our mid-late teens when we got involved in the 90s.

Pirate's have certainly managed to negotiate their way through both neo-liberalism and the advance of modern technology, reaching out beyond the FM dial and club nights and onto the internet, embracing social media, building up 'brand image', etc. But, ultimately, the way that I think youngsters consume and surround themselves in culture such as music, video, radio has changed substantially in the last 5 years particularly and I think that it will see the decline of the traditional FM pirate, if not quite yet. Certainly when I was back in London just before Xmas the dial was as chocka as ever, although I know I'm getting old because it seems to lack a lot of the originality and freshness when I listen.
 
stethoscope said:
I was reading an article the other day where it said the average age for those involved in pirates tend to be around 30+, and even if the listenership might stretch younger, I think there's something in that tbh. Thinking about it, all those people I know involved in playing on or running pirates are in their thirties or forties so pirate radio probably is no longer the youth movement that it became for the last 20 years. I know I and my mates were in our mid-late teens when we got involved in the 90s.

Pirate's have certainly managed to negotiate their way through both neo-liberalism and the advance of modern technology, reaching out beyond the FM dial and club nights and onto the internet, embracing social media, building up 'brand image', etc. But, ultimately, the way that I think youngsters consume and surround themselves in culture such as music, video, radio has changed substantially in the last 5 years particularly and I think that it will see the decline of the traditional FM pirate, if not quite yet. Certainly when I was back in London just before Xmas the dial was as chocka as ever, although I know I'm getting old because it seems to lack a lot of the originality and freshness when I listen.
Click to expand...

I think one problem is that there seems to be an omni omni everything everything syndrome in the way that people consume music these days. I know people who will go through 10 mixes on a daily basis and I'm like jesus christ, put the breaks on, digest some of this music before you start hyping it up to be the next innovative thing.

I suppose I'm guilty in another way in that I always look for more abstract sounds and tend to avoid hookier pieces of music, but that's not how scenes develop. I mean, I don't even think it makes sense to speak of scenes as such anymore. A lot of the grime I've been hearing this week from the UK has adopted positively trap (trap!) production values.

The thing is, urban/dance music relies on senius creativity for real originality to shine. I don't think internet culture lends itself to that. I think the only way around this then becomes a DJs ability to be chronologically familiar with the music and have an explicit ethos of roots'n'phuture. Could you imagine how much of a problem this would have been if dnb emerged in the internet age? It would be tragic simply because the idea of the feedback loop wouldn't be there as there'd be no scene as such. so you'd have individual mishmashes of styles with nothing coherent to hold them together or push the scene forward.

In some senses techno has managed to skirt this by reactivating more esoteric styles of music that are genetically connected to it, I.E: industrial, noise, EBM etc. but I dunno. I'm really not sure what the next evolution is going to be.
 
Also, the landscape has changed with modern technology and how that's affected consumption for culture because the latest underground music scene no longer only comes up through the pirates as it did 5 or 10 years ago. House, ragga, hardcore, jungle, d'n'b, garage, grime, dubstep, bass were all championed on pirates as those musics vied to get any exposure amongst legal radio outlets (commercial radio and the BBC always seen as 5+ years or so behind the latest curve and then putting this stuff into specialist/graveyard shifts).

With former pirate stations like Rinse and Kane getting the first of the community licenses that shifted that paradigm a bit more, but the internet and social media has been the main driver for really shaking things up. In the ever competitive radio market, legal radio is much more at the forefront of picking up the latest thing (direct from someone's soundcloud via twitter and a DJ playing it on Kiss or 1xtra). As is internet radio.

So, where does this leave pirates? Apart from I'd say grime and ragga (I'm excluding the African, Turkish stations here), I don't really hear much on pirates that I couldn't hear on legal radio shows, or internet radio stations. And then there's mixcloud, soundcloud, youtube, and all manner of internet media platforms.
 
Last edited:
The main difference was if you wanted to hear proper dance music you'd have to tune in. Now a set on radio goes on podcast, mixcloud etc, and people hear it away from the station live, and adds to the pile of other mixes floating around endlessly.

Most FM survives in cars...young people in London have cars a lot less, if ever they did. Insurance costs over £1k I gather for new drivers. You cant just buy a banger like you used to it seems. Still costs a bomb with insurance. That leaves listening to pirates on the net/phones along with all the other sources of media.

Theres no telling audience figures, but i hear some stations flooded with shouts still, so someone is listening - and even bitd it'd often be the same old callers week in week out. I'm not sure the audiences were ever that high. Its not the quantity of listeners though, its the quality ;)

Radio will survive, and good stations will rumble on... going back to house fm, that station is right at the heart of a london house sound...strongly connected to the groove oddessy nights...feels a lot like a scene to me.

I disagree with dial that there are no scenes anymore -loads of scenes going on - all small - all underground again. I think this is a golden age of underground music...so much talent and action out there, so much music coming out, so many little pockets of dj/producers, but most of it is flying way way under the radar. Super clubs are dead - good riddance. (whats missing is more good little venues a la plastic people - need more sweat boxes)

Oh, and also pirates are 24/7 now - that is still shocking to me! A weekend broadcast made it all a bit more intense... yet still all those hours get filled, and still theres so much new music to fill it with.

Im not worried about it... 30-40 years old is the new 20-30 anyway ;)

Rutita1 said:
I have to say I did laugh to myself a bit when you mentioned this ealier...You seemed really concerned :D
Click to expand...
your LACK of concern has gone down on file ;)
 
I don't think germinating underground music scenes really exist anymore. Or if they do, they appeal to the pundit class. See for instance Gqom (which is like some kind of south african minimal house) kuduro (euro-afrohouse) or electro chaabi out of Egypt.

On one hand it's liberating to know about these scenes but on the other I feel like a lot of these people are getting into this stuff for their own orientalist reasons and jacking the obvious signifiers to write about them without being involved in the scenes they write about. You're essentially taking these indigenous forms and gentrifying them fit for pundit consumption. The whole thing leaves me a bit uneasy but on the other hand these scenes haven't exhausted their potentials so they appear to be new to people. It's like rock music, aesthetically speaking there's hardly anything left to explore unless you want to move into avant-garde territory, and the same applies for the house/rave continuum these days.
 
Last edited:
stethoscope said:
For the last 5 years, keep up :D
Click to expand...

I do try but it's getting harder. I can just about remember when legal radio in London was Capital and LBC, period.

I clearly remember the launches of Choice FM, Jazz FM, Kiss of course and even the ill fated WNK.

But I'm getting old and out of touch and anyway I don't go to London as much these days.

As I see it it is much harder to justify pirate radio today than it was 30 or even 10 years ago but there is still something about two turntables and an FM transmitter that online streaming can never offer.
 
ska invita - can you name some of these scenes? Genuinely curious.

I don't deny that there is a techno scene, a house scene, a funky scene, bass and grime scene.

But in the UK I don't see new scenes, new radical mutations emerging.
 
is there not a house scene? a grime scene? a dnb scene? a dub scene? a techo scene? etec etc etc... do all these scenes not have their own sub scenes? loads of scenes! all smaller, all more underground than they used to be... seen....
 
ska invita said:
I disagree with dial that there are no scenes anymore -loads of scenes going on - all small - all underground again. I think this is a golden age of underground music...so much talent and action out there, so much music coming out, so many little pockets of dj/producers, but most of it is flying way way under the radar.
Click to expand...

That just goes to show how little I go out these days :D
ska invita said:
Oh, and also pirates are 24/7 now - that is still shocking to me! A weekend broadcast made it all a bit more intense... yet still all those hours get filled, and still theres so much new music to fill it with.
Click to expand...

Well, there's always been some all week broadcasting, but yeah, the weekend rush was what it was all about. Waiting excitedly on a Thursday evening to Friday afternoon for the static to cut in over the hiss, the mic turned on, and a tune starts :cool:
ska invita said:
Im not worried about it... 30-40 years old is the new 20-30 anyway ;)
Click to expand...

Correct answer ;)
 
ska invita said:
New scenes? Why the need for novelty?
Click to expand...

I'm fine with that, in fact I think too much novelty can be a conservative thing. I was just responding to stethoscope re: pirates fueling new scenes. I don't think that kind of evolution exists in dance music anymore. There are so many microgenres amalgamation only takes place at the level of production these days.

In a way this is liberating because it means that people are less likely to tolerate rip off tunes or the urge to rip off is less strong. But in another sense I just don't see the pirates as the force that will herald the next big scene, if such a thing will even happen.

I think we are getting to a level where we can pick-n-mix styles we like without necessarily creating new scenes and exhausting them. I.E: techno djs playing dubstep and weird bass music...
 
dialectician said:
I don't think germinating underground music scenes really exist anymore. Or if they do, they appeal to the pundit class. See for instance Gqom (which is like some kind of south african minimal house) kuduro (euro-afrohouse) or electro chaabi out of Egypt.

On one hand it's liberating to know about these scenes but on the other I feel like a lot of these people are getting into this stuff for their own orientalist reasons and jacking the obvious signifiers to write about them without being involved in the scenes they write about. You're essentially taking these indigenous forms and gentrifying them fit for pundit consumption. The whole thing leaves me a bit uneasy but on the other hand these scenes haven't exhausted their potentials so they appear to be new to people. It's like rock music, aesthetically speaking there's hardly anything left to explore unless you want to move into avant-garde territory, and the same applies for the house/rave continuum these days.
Click to expand...
I think I understand what you're saying - hacks wanting to get on board a new train without actually giving much of a shit other than to feel cool and with it?
 
ska invita said:
I think I understand what you're saying - hacks wanting to get on board a new train without actually giving much of a shit other than to feel cool and with it?
Click to expand...

Yeah. My whole point is that scenes like Gqom, afrohouse, afro bass, or electro chabi are scenes that (even if using the internet) develop fairly indigenously, kind of like hardcore/grime/dubstep/jungle. But whereas the journalistic writing about those scenes has been to defend them (I'm particularly thinking of hardcore here) the writing about kuduro has been oh look this is an afro-Portuguese scene we can write about, and look, young people are making it, and young females. This is nice, we can make up for the fact that we aren't interested in techno/house/grime/dubstep/whatever because it's gone back underground or can't generate any discourse, and we can tick the diversity card while we're at it. It's totally tokenistic. It's like, let's take this music born out of urban struggle, totally rip the context to shreds and make it fit for consumption in very white and middle-class clubs.

I'm not saying don't write about this music, but put it in its appropriate context. It might be inventive by your standards but for most people who participate in the scene it's pop music, I mean christ Nidia Minaj has admitted that she wants to be on the same level of David Guetta. This separation between pop music and the underground is only really a western European thing.

Like, back home in Turkey we obviously have an underground scene, but it's not got anything to do with dance music, it's noise, metal/hardcore, conscious Hip Hop, and maybe some sample based experimental breaks things. Oh, where was I? Yes. So why don't these serious dance music journalists (who write about avant-techno and experimental electronics w/r home territory) write about the experimental electronic scenes in places like Iran and Egypt?
 
ska invita said:
I think I understand what you're saying - hacks wanting to get on board a new train without actually giving much of a shit other than to feel cool and with it?
Click to expand...

And the thing is, the more journalists write about sounds, the more likely that more club nights materialise - sometimes journalists are actively involved in running/promoting them. It happened with techno in the early 00s and now that techno is cool again (I predict that in the next couple of years it will no longer be - the halcyon age has lasted too long) there's at least three nights you can go to a week in London. Now you're going to argue yeah yeah but this doesn't invalidate my underground point, but my point is precisely that the club is the only form of community we have left, at least for emerging new sounds. That's where there is a scene, if you can call it that. the internet isn't really a scene in the same way. You might choose to tune into a station but you can easily block it off or get overwhelmed with other things or just have it as background wallpaper muzak - I sometimes do this.

The thing with traditional house, garage and grime pirates is they're essentially playing a sound that's already established and set in stone in club culture,

That's no bad thing of course, otherwise we wouldn't have dub, soul and funk stations for instance. I just wouldn't look to these people to generate any development/mutation/bastardisation in any scene.
 
Last edited:
I dont know D, I dont really read about music, I just listen to it. People who write regularly about music need new stuff to talk about, so quite normal that they report on whats new or being discovered. Not sure thats Orientalism - just journalism really. If it annoys you I recommend not reading it - works well for me :thumbs:.
dialectician said:
I just wouldn't look to these people to generate any development/mutation/bastardisation in any scene.
Click to expand...
things always move on, even in the bigger genres...to me all the lets mix x with y things are fads and burn out quickly, usually leaving very little good music behind - the set in stone traditions are set in stone for a reason. I posted something about this on the Retromania thread: the idea that a new sound as new as when electronic dance music blew up in the late 80s/early 90s has to come along regularly needs to be forgotten about...if something genuinely new does come along, great, but I wouldnt bank on it. Theres only so many drum patterns and basslines in the world.
 
ska invita said:
I dont know D, I dont really read about music, I just listen to it. People who write regularly about music need new stuff to talk about, so quite normal that they report on whats new or being discovered. Not sure thats Orientalism - just journalism really. If it annoys you I recommend not reading it - works well for me :thumbs:.
Click to expand...

No, I have no problem with people writing about music, I mean as someone on the hunt for new music I find it useful to read magazines simply to catch up on things or learn about something that might have passed me by.

It's like trying to sell reggae to consumers as this crazy avant-garde music when it is anything but in Ja.
 
ska invita said:
things always move on, even in the bigger genres...to me all the lets mix x with y things are fads and burn out quickly, usually leaving very little good music behind - the set in stone traditions are set in stone for a reason. I posted something about this on the Retromania thread: the idea that a new sound as new as when electronic dance music blew up in the late 80s/early 90s has to come along regularly needs to be forgotten about...if something genuinely new does come along, great, but I wouldnt bank on it. Theres only so many drum patterns and basslines in the world.
Click to expand...

I dunno, I can see plenty of possibilities for UK dance music that aren't being explored. a merger of south asian rhythms with bass music and darkside techno atmospherics, for instance.

Obviously there are traditions like donk, scouse house, makina etc which fulfill a function (even if i don't like em) but what is the point of setting a tradition in stone like fucking drumcode loop techno or tech house? Or Dungeon halfstep. How is that creative, even within existing conventions? Literally what is the point?

Some traditions need to not be set in stone and die off imho.

Anyway we're going waaaaaay off topic so I'm going to try and dig out this retromania thread. :thumbs:
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

cm.london.30
Drum and Bass on the bike, London 2024
Replies
0
Views
200
cm.london.30
cm.london.30
N
Portuguese music in London?
Replies
2
Views
206
Ms Ordinary
M
cm.london.30
London Bicycle Rave - Sunday 14th July
Replies
9
Views
527
editor
editor
editor
Pirate rehearsal studios in Camden - where the owner checks your bag for alcohol and demands Photo ID
Replies
7
Views
661
platinumsage
platinumsage
Silverghost
Vinyl Record Store Recommendations In London:
Replies
5
Views
388
rutabowa
R
Back
Top Bottom