Is Anybody Listening?

”All art is political, and music right now is especially political,“ says Chamberlain. ”Music, more than anywhere else, is where that independence is heard.“ Internet expert Steve Jones, though wary about the future of Internet broadcasting, stresses that collectives such as Kill Radio are hugely important. ”They matter enormously,“ he says. ”Every type of non-mainstream media content that‘s available matters in a big way. Because it says, ’We can do it.‘ People like that, they give us hope.“

It’s a warm Sunday afternoon, the last weekend in April, and the spring heat accentuates the dorm room must that hangs in the hallway at Kill Radio. Today, hardly anyone is around -- a caravan has headed up to San Francisco for the IMC meeting at the Project Censored convention, and another has set out to the desert for the Coachella music festival. But the radio room is not quiet. Kimo Arbas sits alone at the console in a blue Maui T-shirt and combat boots, blissfully cutting back and forth between turntable and tape deck, creating a raucous mix of Jimi Hendrix, Edgard Varese‘s ”orchestral turn-of-the-century chaos“ and an album of dogs barking. He is uncharacteristically laconic. When, finally, he lifts the padded headphones from his ears, he says seriously, self-importantly, ”This is an improvisational ensemble. I couldn’t play half my shit on regular radio.“ Then a full-on grin breaks across his face, and he adds, ”Plus, it‘s a blast.“

In the Music section: Is Napster preserving our musical heritage?