THE SIGNAL

Hey kids – well The Signal is just back from a fantastic weekend at the Explosions In The Sky curated ATP in Butlins, Minehead.  An absolutely wonderful festival of post-rock instrumentalism and indie boy strumming which led to lots of fun and much chalet dancing!  There were many, many great acts, but just some of the highlights included (deep breath!) the fantastic party-loving De La Soul, Okkervil River, the wonderful Jens Lekman, Adem with his brilliant array of covers, the delicate and beautiful Beach House, the rockin’ Silver Jews, The National who were mean moody and magnificent, and worthy headliners Broken Social Scene.  Plus of course the spine of the festival was Dinosaur Jr, who played 2 gigs, with J. Mascis and Lou Barlow seemingly being at every other band that played (but never at the same time!).

So as for The Signal, some changes are afoot (indeed even bigger changes were almost afoot, but that turned out not to be).  First up we are moving location to London, which I suspect means even more gigs to go to and great music to hear – all good things!  Which means we should be able to bring you the show on a more regular basis and packed with tunes, interviews and features.  Plus The Signal will still be exclusive to Radio Magnetic (which is mediaspeak for no-one else would have us).  Watch out for a new edition of The Signal on Radio Magnetic in June!

In the meantime I’m thinking about creating a portal for some of my own radio history.  I’ve been presenting radio programmes for a long time now, and over the years built up quite an archive of interviews and sessions.  The vast majority of these were recorded for Cool FM and include chats with big hitters and chart botherers such as Radiohead, Oasis, Manic Street Preachers, Suede and Fatboy Slim, plus indie kids like The Divine Comedy, Belle & Sebastian (several times!!), Teenage Fanclub, Hefner & Stephen Malkmus.  There are loads of others that I plan to catalogue and archive properly, and hopefully I’ll be able to offer them via a blog for any interested listeners.  I’ll also put up my playlists for my shows on previous stations if I can find them.  Total self-indulgence, but at least it’ll all be in one place!  Anyway, if anyone has some advice about how best to present audio interviews online I’d be happy to hear it.

Stay loose!