Internet radio from non-English-speaking countries can open your ears to all kinds of new music, despite the fact that you may not be able to understand what the DJs are saying in between tracks. Here's a rundown of the best Internet stations around the world.
Radio FG -- Broadcasts out of Paris, France. FG plays melodic, vocal-heavy house and acid jazz. A lot of the vocals on the tracks are in English, even though I didn't recognize any of the songs as English- or American-made. There's very little DJ presence at all; I would appreciate a little more, if only so I can find out, in among the French I've forgotten how to translate, what the songs are called and who they're by. There's no track listing on the web site, either.
Orang -- A German search engine that lists a vast amount of musical genres. I tried going to the drum n' bass section and, instead of a radio station, I found a list of MP3s. You can click on an individual song, and up pops your RealPlayer to stream it. This is cool because you get to choose exactly what track you want to hear, but it's problematic in that you can't put on a continuous stream of music like you'd hear on a traditional radio station; you keep having to go back to the list and select new tracks. I listened to a cut called Intastate by Kabuki vs. Daniel Savine. It was mellow drum n' bass in the style of LTJ Bukem. Looking through the site after the song finished, I did eventually find some ready-made playlists, compiled by the webmasters and also posted by Orang users. It was great to finally be both listening to a continuous mix and reading what the tracks were as they played. I listened to a playlist called Kokusaidoori Extensions by a user from Japan named Yorck. It was perhaps the most sparse, ambient house I've ever heard in my life; squelches took the place of the beat, and the rest of the track was just beeps and echoes. I loved it.
Mike's Radio World has a good feature for finding foreign radio stations: a by-location listing. Here are some good stations I found on Mike's list.
Tempo FM -- Tempo comes out of Kampenhout, Belgium. I can't understand a word the enthusiastic DJ is saying, but he's playing some good garage with lots of female vocals, including the British garage smash Re-Rewind by Artful Dodger. Tempo seems to play mostly garage, so fans of the genre should stop by and check it out.
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