Radio Topo: live radio from Zaragoza

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Dusting off the needle…

Radio Topo

Still nobody's getting paid.

Metal, ska and soundclash reggae, straight from Zaragoza.

Radio Topo came out of Zaragoza's social movements in 1993, started by people already organising inside them, and it has been run the same way ever since: a horizontal collective where the assembly decides and joining means more than turning up for your own slot. It takes no advertising and no sponsorship of any kind, and treats that as a definition rather than a policy. Its own account of what it does has stayed the same: it assaults the frequencies from under the paving stones.

Thirty-odd shows fill the week. Cuerdas de Acero takes hard rock and metal, Skandalo en las Ondas and Skarlata Ojara the ska, Tune Fi Tune the soundclash reggae; Los Tres Cuervos swings from metal specials to new Irish artists. El Vinilo Perdido digs the station's own record library — Italian art-pop one week, a whole seventies hard-rock discography the next — and Mondo Modorro keeps up with Aragonese bands.

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Zaragoza, Spain

Radio Topo

Still nobody's getting paid.

Metal, ska and soundclash reggae, straight from Zaragoza.

Radio Topo came out of Zaragoza's social movements in 1993, started by people already organising inside them, and it has been run the same way ever since: a horizontal collective where the assembly decides and joining means more than turning up for your own slot. It takes no advertising and no sponsorship of any kind, and treats that as a definition rather than a policy. Its own account of what it does has stayed the same: it assaults the frequencies from under the paving stones.

Thirty-odd shows fill the week. Cuerdas de Acero takes hard rock and metal, Skandalo en las Ondas and Skarlata Ojara the ska, Tune Fi Tune the soundclash reggae; Los Tres Cuervos swings from metal specials to new Irish artists. El Vinilo Perdido digs the station's own record library — Italian art-pop one week, a whole seventies hard-rock discography the next — and Mondo Modorro keeps up with Aragonese bands.