Global field recordings and regional pop, crackle included.
Radio Is A Foreign Country started out of New Orleans around 2019 as a mixtape series run by Kenneth Routon, and it has since grown into a round-the-clock station. It is a listener-funded non-profit whose stated mission is exploring new and forgotten ways of making radio, and its archive holds close to two hundred numbered mixtapes, many made by guest collectors, archivists and label people who know a region's records inside out. The site also works as a dial, tuning in like-minded stations from Berlin to Ramallah beside its own signal.
Its own stream wanders through regional records most listeners have never heard, from Indonesian dangdut and jaipongan to Thai luk thung, Algerian raï, Amazonian cumbia and Indian film songs, often lifted from cassettes and 78s. Between them sit field recordings from villages and forests, captured shortwave broadcasts and old station idents, and the occasional surf, exotica or psychedelic oddity.
A passport you never have to stamp.
