XRaydio 2: Vintage JukeboxXRaydio 2: Vintage Jukebox

The station started in Plovdiv in 2011, hatched over an afternoon's drinking between Zac Kuzmanov and the music promoter Miroslav Simeonov and on air days later. Miro died soon after, and it has carried his rock and roll enthusiasms since, eventually splitting into three parallel streams so that one could be given over entirely to the archive. Kuzmanov calls the whole thing a club as much as a station, and it has run on listener donations rather than advertising from the start.

Mod, vintage soul and jazz, bubblegum pop, glam and funk carry the middle of this one, with pre-war laments, jet-set lounge, roughneck country and jungle exotica in the corners where a hits station would put a chorus everyone knows. The pull is toward the strange end of the archive, and the sequencing treats a novelty single and a standard as equals.