Viral Radio

A project I have been working on since late 2006 has been Viral Radio, a series of music nights and a monthly radio show on Dutch public radio NPS Lijn5. Originally a materialization of the dubstep evangelism sprung out my experiences at DMZ in South-London and our own London Night in at Lantaren/Venster in Rotterdam, this has gradually become a container for new kinds of experimental club and unclub music. With the development of dubstep from spartan halftime ‹wobblers› via ultraspeed synthstep to gravity defying video game music, the scope has broadened to post-jungle freetronica and post-Dilla blips and bleeps.

After a two month break Viral Radio will return on NPS Lijn5 next week, with first time guests and recent dubstep converts Cinnaman and Aardvarck. Cinnaman will join me as co-host of the show. After two successful club nights, Viral Radio will also host its first festival on 23 June, at club 11 and the Bimhuis in Amsterdam. The first names that have been confirmed are Icarus (Rump/London), King Midas Sound (Hyperdub/London), Martyn (3024/Rotterdam), Zomby (Hyperdub/London), Darkstar (Hyperdub/London) and Ikonika (Hyperdub/London). This festival will be an investigation into bass and rhythm, and it will be the last chance to hear dubstep at one of Amsterdam’s most worldly clubs.

Originally, the title Viral Radio was derived from a paper by Andrew Lippman and David P. Reed from MIT Media Lab, who coined the term in 2004:

«This paper defines a domain of study, some experiments and a research agenda to explore a topic we term viral radio. The premise is that we can make energy- and spectrum-efficient radio communications systems that scale (almost) without bound. We do this by treating the RF signals in a given space as a distributed optimisation process whereby each radio uses the presence of other radios to assist and cooperate in the delivery of messages. Any relaying that occurs is done in the RF domain; we thus eliminate delays normally associated with multi-hop ad hoc networks. Further, we embed the routing decision in the RF processing and view it as a matter of ‹flux-propagation› rather than path definition — data is delivered from a source transmitter to the ultimate recipient with some RF amplification provided by any radios that are in the propagation path. Our goal is to develop a simple radio networking architecture organised on an end-to-end design basis. We expect that we can build scalable and efficient real-time telecommunications and broadcast systems that rely on no central radiator or suite of cell towers.»

The notion of creating autonomous networks enthused me, and could obviously draw the parallel with dubstep. With this in our mind, we continue our humble mission to encover the music of our time. Keep it locked.

Related posts:  Viral Radio searches graphic designer  //  A night of hyperbass and future beats in Amsterdam  //  Viral Beats - London, Bristol, Glasgow in Amsterdam  //  Audio Viral Radio Bash on 3voor12  //  We never expected it to be this popular  //