City Pop Three Los Angeles: live radio uit Fukuoka

Eeeven...

De naald wordt afgestoft…

City Pop Three Los Angeles

Session players, no borders.

Yacht rock and city pop, same ocean either way.

City Pop Three opened in February 2022 and argues a point rather than merely playing records: that American yacht rock and Japanese city pop are the same music heard from opposite sides of the Pacific. DJ White Velvet programmes it for m·radio in Fukuoka, mixing the West Coast studio sound of the late seventies and early eighties straight into the Tokyo records it helped shape, never announcing which country any given song came from and leaving the listener to work it out for themselves.

So Airplay's Nothin' You Can Do About It from 1980 lands next to Etsuko Sai from 1986, Toto from 1982 next to Toshiki Kadomatsu's Office Lady, and Kenny Loggins ahead of Tomoko Aran and Kingo Hamada. Heard back to back, the session players, the chord changes and the studio gloss turn out to be more or less the same thing, which is easier to notice than it is to argue.

vanm·radio

Meer zoals deze

JapanFukuoka

City Pop One Tokyo

Ten songs, then ten more.

JapanFukuoka

City Pop Two Seoul

The goodbye you keep replaying.

JapanFukuoka

City Pop Four Taipei

Taiwan, playing for itself.

United StatesSan Francisco

Left Coast 70s

Cabernet not included.

FinlandHelsinki

Yle Radio Suomi

Every sauna's second voice.

United KingdomLondon

Hoxton Radio

Where Radio 1 does its shopping.

IcelandReykjavik

RÚV Rás 2

A nation of 400,000, one playlist.

Czech RepublicPrague

Fajn Rock Music

One rocker's life's work, on shuffle.

SwitzerlandBaden

Secret Rooftop Sessions

On all day, never in the way.

United StatesSan Francisco

Vaporwaves

Elevator music from a dream.

SpainMadrid

Radio Carcoma

Still annoying the right people.

SpainMadrid

Sala London Radio

Requests open, playlist closed.

PolandWarsaw

House of Funk Radio

Fifteen-year-old records welcome.

United KingdomLondon

Jazz Funk Soul Radio

Crate-diggers passing the baton.

BelgiumGhent

Radio Atlantis Gent

Nostalgia with a criminal record.

United KingdomLondon

ChuntFM

Small station, enormous record bag.

United StatesMiami

Jolt Radio

Miami without the velvet rope.

Dominican RepublicSanto Domingo

Radio Bizarro

Taste over traffic, every time.

United StatesSan Francisco

Tiki Time

Escapism with a house band.

GuatemalaGuatemala City

Radio Infinita

Proof the mainstream is optional.

Fukuoka, Japan

City Pop Three Los Angeles

Session players, no borders.

Yacht rock and city pop, same ocean either way.

City Pop Three opened in February 2022 and argues a point rather than merely playing records: that American yacht rock and Japanese city pop are the same music heard from opposite sides of the Pacific. DJ White Velvet programmes it for m·radio in Fukuoka, mixing the West Coast studio sound of the late seventies and early eighties straight into the Tokyo records it helped shape, never announcing which country any given song came from and leaving the listener to work it out for themselves.

So Airplay's Nothin' You Can Do About It from 1980 lands next to Etsuko Sai from 1986, Toto from 1982 next to Toshiki Kadomatsu's Office Lady, and Kenny Loggins ahead of Tomoko Aran and Kingo Hamada. Heard back to back, the session players, the chord changes and the studio gloss turn out to be more or less the same thing, which is easier to notice than it is to argue.

vanm·radio