Radio AG is an underground broadcast station operating out of Allied Heights in San Diego. This station was built by a crew of like-minded djs, mcs, producers, artists and visionaries: The Allied Heights Soundsystem, with the aim of amplifying a vibe that has been present on the local landscape for awhile and putting some guessing back into the music game.
The Radio AG Experience
At this point in time, the central event is the Live Transmission Party, which is in essence a rave up that occurs once a month in the Radio AG studio, a free-for-all event where members of the crew and friends pull out some records to throw on the decks while others get on the mic and toast, generating that vibe that can only be found in the heights. Not honing in on any one sound, the Live Transmission Party instead trades in vibes, creating an extended musical trip with a careening charm and a selection of tracks veering from but not excluding the standard sound of the FM hegemony.
The music featured on Radio AG is a combination of grooves actually from the Allied Heights scene (both past and present) and music from elsewhere that has been a part of the AG experience (either deeply influential on its djs and producers, or burning up dancefloors and rooms across the neighborhood). Or both, for that matter. The sounds of techno, soul, house, jazz, salsa, industrial, funk, jungle, electro, hip hop, alternative, reggae, disco, tropicalia, folk, ambient, juju, trip hop, dub, afrobeat, rock ‘n roll, and of course the tronnik rhythms of the heights itself all have a place in the sonic soiree that is Radio AG… these sounds and others are the components that the Allied Heights scene was built on.
During the daytime hours, Vidd draws on a deep sapphire pool of grooves in the Radio AG vaults. At 6:00am (PST) every morning, the Sunrise Selection begins, with Vidd pulling out a bit of synth and new wave, perhaps a dash of soul, and a fair bit of power pop to kick off the day with flair. Then, at 10:00am (PST) things segue into High Noon, the lunch time show, where Vidd introduces some funk into the mix with grooves from all over, not to mention some more rock ‘n roll. Things only get stranger when Another Cosmic Afternoon sweeps across the airwaves at 1:00pm (PST), where hard rock, afrobeat, jazz and kosmische jams enter the fray. As the end of the working day approaches, Vidd works into groove-based territory with the odd disco and electrofunk cut.
At 5:00pm (PST), the night time shows begin, presented by the Radio AG djs, hosts and special guests. Sometimes these shows are mixed live, and on others they’re standard tunestacks presented by the respective djs for each show. See the current schedule for detailed showtimes for this week, and check out the shows section for a detailed breakout of every current show on Radio AG. These resources will tell you everything you need to know in order to catch your show on Radio AG.
By the time midnight rolls around, Typhe and Sym take over the console and play the late night tunes: techno, ambient house and space music into the early hours of the morning, where another day begins.
The Third Industrial Revolution
If you’re looking for some shadowy pre-history to this scene, you might as well call it off since everybody knows that trying to pinpoint the genesis of any scene or sound is a chicken-or-the-egg proposition under even the best of circumstances. And yet something happened when Slye and Snakes, mainlining on the futuresounds of techno, breakbeat science, and Gibson’s cyberpunk vision of the future, started putting out tracks on labels like Aztek and Mettrex Recordings: tronnik rhythms and beats under guises like Futureform, Percussitron and E-Thèque. Cruising around the heights and greater San Diego area, listening to tapes from Detroit, Chicago and Stockholm, not to mention a growing number of homegrown beats emanating from the heights itself.
The inter-city excursions to the outerrim of Lakeside, where half the crew resided at the time, birthed outre programming and the early transmissions with Trinity and Gryphon runnin’ tings on Hack TV and Radio E, holding it down and making things happen. The brothers tuned them into a pre-royalty DJ Smugshot brewing up his own unique potions of abstract hip hop that couldn’t have come from anywhere (or anyone) else. He quickly joined the fray. Visual artists like Arsenic and Firefox, conjuring up the visual end, created four-dimensional, imagistic works representing the selfsame experience as works of art in the digital domain. There were days at the plaza, with its of modal aura the time, nights out at the clubs or deep in an electronic lacuna spiraling off into the cold recesses of the night.
All of this and more laid the basis for what has progressed to become Radio AG: the broadcast manifestation of these experiences (some wonderful, some not) in and of a scene that was dreamed up one day by some brothers and sisters with more imagination than money, no clear way but a will, more or less making it up as they went along. We’re still riding that rollercoaster, and the dust hasn’t settled yet. Think of this merely as the end of the prologue… this story is still just beginning and there’s so much more to be written. Why not come along for the ride?
