KCHUNG RadioKCHUNG Radio

Solomon Bothwell put the first KCHUNG broadcast out in March 2011, with Harsh Patel drawing the graphics and Luke Fischbeck helping shape the programming. That summer it travelled — live from LACMA, The Smell and Ooga Booga on a hand-rigged portable antenna whose signal barely left the room it was in — before Bothwell installed a low-power transmitter in the basement of the Public School in Chinatown, with an antenna on Fischbeck's studio roof nearby. On 1630 AM it reached roughly the 500 feet of Chung King Road, and no further.

Around forty-five shows fill a week now, and a roster of more than two hundred members means no two hours match: Velvet Disko and Semi Precious Soul, Casual Goth, One Billion BPM, Habibti Radio, sound-art hours like Unwrinkled Ear, and talk from Parrhesia Now and Bread and Hyacinths. Dues run twelve dollars a month, records still arrive by post, and there are no institutional backers.