Moon Phase Radio AmbientMoon Phase Radio Ambient

Moon Phase Radio started broadcasting on 1 January 2010 and has stayed commercial free the whole time, privately funded with help from its listeners, taking no money at all to put a record on air. The lunar conceit runs the whole way through, down to a registered office given as a set of coordinates east of Copernicus, but the work underneath it is ordinary and unglamorous: listening to everything that arrives, writing up the ones worth writing up, and keeping two channels stocked.

The Ambient channel is the slower of the two, running drone, modern classical and long-form pieces almost entirely from independent and unsigned producers. A weekly top ten goes up every Monday evening, worked out from listener behaviour rather than anyone's opinion, and it is usually full of names that have never been near a label. New submissions get a spell of heavier rotation while people work out what to think.