inadequate

journal for the self-obsessed generation

13:99/02/08
 


Music and mayhem

You thought Internet radio sucked, right?

Yeah. It does. But I was amazed this week to find something really worthwhile amongst all the commercial or insufficiently-resourced dross.

GaiaLive has hours of archived shows in most dance genres. Real DJs (some of them DJs you might actually have heard of - I'm listening to DJ Rap right now, the well-known female drum'n'bass DJ*), real music, no adverts, and a server that has actually worked every time I've tried.

They only have live output in the evenings and at weekends, but who needs live shows when you can cherry-pick those quality archives?

Other hits as far as I'm concerned: respected international techno/ambient/tech-funk DJ Colin Dale's Abstrakt Dance radio show (from London's Kiss 100 FM) is archived online.

Misses: Pirateradio.co.uk looked good, but I could never connect (Oh - it appears to be down now). Spinner makes you download annoying software, throws adverts at you (on-screen only, thankfully), and has tunes chosen by a computer rather than selected and mixed by a DJ - don't waste your time. (There are other similar services, I won't bother listing them.) greenwitch has a nice name and what appears to be an interesting philosophy (one to watch in future, perhaps), but a lousy web site with no information about them, and no dance music. And, of course, all the regular commercial radio stations that broadcast online. Adverts? Please. Not in my office.

--sam

* The only female drum'n'bass DJ most people have ever heard of...