UP FM: live radio from Patras

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Dusting off the needle…

UP FM

Amateurs, in the good sense.

Post-punk, laïko and jazz, all in one student week.

The University of Patras voted a station into existence in 2002, and UP FM went on air on 10 June 2003 from the Rectorate building on the Rio campus, a few kilometres up the coast from the city it covers. It moved to 103.7 in September 2019 and has run around the clock since, reaching Patras and most of Western Greece. Every producer is a student or a member of university staff, chosen through an open call each spring, so the grid is rebuilt from scratch with each academic year rather than inherited.

That yearly reshuffle is why a single week holds post-punk and minimal synth on Obscure Identities, a rap and R&B hour, an evening given over to rebetiko and laïko, and a jazz show that spends its hour asking who is left to play the stuff. Musicians come in to talk at length in Greek between the records, from the art-song and folk-rock songwriters to stoner bands and jazz organists.

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Patras, Greece

UP FM

Amateurs, in the good sense.

Post-punk, laïko and jazz, all in one student week.

The University of Patras voted a station into existence in 2002, and UP FM went on air on 10 June 2003 from the Rectorate building on the Rio campus, a few kilometres up the coast from the city it covers. It moved to 103.7 in September 2019 and has run around the clock since, reaching Patras and most of Western Greece. Every producer is a student or a member of university staff, chosen through an open call each spring, so the grid is rebuilt from scratch with each academic year rather than inherited.

That yearly reshuffle is why a single week holds post-punk and minimal synth on Obscure Identities, a rap and R&B hour, an evening given over to rebetiko and laïko, and a jazz show that spends its hour asking who is left to play the stuff. Musicians come in to talk at length in Greek between the records, from the art-song and folk-rock songwriters to stoner bands and jazz organists.