Algorythmic Radio on #ds106radio

Posted on May 4, 2020 by Reverend

A few years back I toyed with the idea of doing a radio show on that would simply be a trail of algorythmic recommendations that sent me down a trail on the web and recording that via music, sounds, etc. In my head it was the idea of capturing the way we are shaped by these recommendation engines, but when I was playing with this on there were very few folks listening. There still are very few folks, but when the listener base goes from 1 to 4, that is 4x the reach 🙂 Anyway, after Nigel Robertson‘s epic anti-war show last Saturday on the radio I was inspired to follow the algorythmic radio idea after teasing him on Twitter, and what followed was a hodgepodge of war-related songs that was a pretty fun hour of live surfing on the radio. 

I was using Youtube and iTunes alternatively to cue up songs and see what YouTube was recommending based on my last choice, etc. The algorithim was not all that smart— surprise, surprise—and I performed quite a few interventions, but this idea of curation influenced my algorithmic recommendation is a fun show idea for me. I did one last weekend, and now again this past weekend.

The more recent “show” of Algorythmic Radio was focused on 1990s post-punk, predominantly from US and focused by-and-large on the LA hub Jabberjaw. It was a very fun show, and I had seen many of these bands perform live at Jabberjaw which made it extra sweet. It started as simply a recognition of the awesome radio Scottlo had been doing with Brian Lamb and then Chahira Nouira and Anne-Marie Scott. it was a wonderful morning of stories and laughing, and I wanted to acknowledge it. But as they were getting ready for bed I was gearing up for the day, and my LCD Soundsystem dedication quickly sent me down a rabbit hole of radio that was fun.

I think it was Blonde Redhead that sent me down the early to mid-1990s path of tunes.

And after that it was off to races, and using Youtube and iTunes as a Jukebox with some algorythmic help for this geezer’s faltering memory.

I made my one mistake on the Hammerhead song, which was lame, but cleaned it up quick. 

It was a really fun morning of radio for me, and extra sweet that Grant Potter jumped on the stream soon after and played some music using the VCVRack  codebase on Github that is an open-source virtual modular synthesizer.

It was a blast, and I hope to do some more shows in the future, but for now below is the “Let’s Have a War” show from April 25th:

And the “Good to the Last Drop” 90s post-punk show from yesterday, May 3rd:

The radio has been an absolute blast, and I haven’t even written about the yet 🙂

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