A night-out on the airwaves

If you’ve been turning on the radio recently and you find yourself not sticking to one station, you must have noticed that the Manila FM spectrum got an injection of electronic beats and chilling grooves. Now, if you’re thinking along the veins of the Saturday night dance shows on the prominent pop stations, then it’s gone beyond that – we’ve got entire stations.

On Easter Sunday, after a week without changing its programming like it usually does on Holy Week, 923 Joey – formerly a jazz and retro pop station – flipped formats and relaunched as 92.3 xFM, which describes themselves as “dreamy, downtempo [and] atmospheric” in one of its stingers. And, just recently, a new radio station – possibly a pirate, although we can never be sure – popped up at 107.1 MHz. It calls itself Underground Radio.

Well, for those who can’t seem to get enough of their Saturday nights out – or programs such as The Blue Room on Wave, or David’s House on Hit FM – they’ve got so much more to choose from.

A little shot of chill

The 923 Joey reformat has been making buzz out of the forums for quite a while. There was speculation that the station would begin playing more 80s pop in the vein of the former 99.5 RT, but some also said that it’s bound to take up a chillout format, playing underrepresented genres such as electronica and trip-hop.

True enough, it flipped towards the chillout format on Easter Sunday. The week before Joey, which usually plays more instrumentals during Lent, was still in its regular playlist, as if it was giving out a silently jubilant last hurrah. A management change at the station is where all fingers are pointed: Francis Lumen, who headed Joey after his stint at the former CityLite 88.3, was replaced by former RT jock and current GMA voiceover Al Torres.

While Joey had electronic-based music programs in its schedule, like Antos Ramos’ Friday night chillout show A Time To Chill, the genre’s never been given a big exposure until now. Although the station remains pre-programmed, and the voices to some extent remain the same, the music sounds very much different – also to an extent. Chillout tracks now form the bulk of the playlist, with the odd house track thrown in. Songs remain unknown probably to most casual listeners: familiarity is supplied by the occasional Madonna remix, still selected to fit the station sound, or maybe Imogen Heap.

But the station still manages to pull off a few surprises. Enthusiasts and curious listeners alike tuned in on the first week to see what kind of music xFM would play, and sometimes what they’d play even challenges how chillout music is defined. There are a handful of indie rock tracks on rotation – one staple is Paul Weller‘s Thinking About You, and another is Coldplay‘s Trouble – while occasionally the station looks back on its former format and plays some jazz instrumentals. All of this, while playing genre staples like Morcheeba and Zero 7.

And, true enough, it’s been exciting not a few listeners. Some are hailing the fact that the station didn’t flip formats and sell out to corporate demands – in fact, you could say xFM is a lot more obscure as compared to its predecessor. Personally, I think the station sounds good while maintaining the element of surprise. It’s one station you’d expect to tune in to when you’re driving home from work, or when you’re dozing off to sleep. That, while actually (initially) confusing me as to what they’re really up to; at one point they went so upbeat I almost tuned out. However, lengthy listeners might have a gripe with repetition: already I heard Imogen Heap’s Goodnight and Go twenty-four hours apart, practically at the same time in the mornings. Probably this has to do with the limited number of tracks, as this is a fairly new genre.

Also, new listeners might tend to treat xFM with a long stick: it can tend to sound like a trip-hopper’s music collection, and for someone who likes to know what is being played (like me) the pre-programmed nature of the station doesn’t help wonders. Nevertheless, the folks at NBC have done an amazing job pulling this off.

And from out of the blue

Just recently, however, another radio station appeared from out of the static. It literally popped up at 107.1 MHz, leading most to speculate that this station, which calls itself Underground Radio, is a pirate station. And it somehow seems to be: its signal fades occasionally from where I live, but it comes out (satisfactorily, but not exactly) clear most of the time.

So far it is still too early to actually explain thoroughly the station’s sound. In the few times I’ve tuned in, they’ve been playing uninterrupted DJ sets: house at night, and remixed 80s floor fillers in the day. And who’s behind it is up for speculation as well – some say it is Anton Ramos, who previously ran another pirate at 104.7 MHz before the National Telecommunications Commission asked him to shut down.

Nevertheless, for those who have heard of it (and personally, I know blogging about it isn’t helping the station’s existence), it’s been attracting listening ears. Underground Radio, for some of its patchy signal – it is apparently weak in Manila, which probably points for the station’s location as being somewhere in the south – is providing more variety in a FM environment that’s been hit (no pun intended) with four reformats. With this station being obviously in the underground, however, it is only a matter of time before the NTC catches up with it.

But these two stations are still a welcome development. For one, they’re championing a genre that, despite the number of shows already present on the radio, is still underrepresented. For those in the upper classes who put a premium on variety – and I can only guess everyone does – it provides choice in a landscape that saw K-Lite flip to another “easy listening” format, RT lose its distinctiveness, and Campus Radio “sell out” to the mass market.

And personally, this brings hope that there are still people on radio who are genuinely passionate for the music the play. That alone makes me stereo in the bedroom turned on a little bit more frequently than before…