Dinamo CaffeDinamo Caffe

When Dinamo gave up Istanbul's 103.8 FM in 2013, after ten years on air, the point was not to get smaller: one frequency could not hold the amount of music the station wanted to play, so what began in November 2003 as a single signal became nine parallel channels. Each has a person choosing the records rather than a recommendation engine, which is why they arrived slowly, one at a time. Humans curate every channel here; robots are for other services. The slowest of them is the one that proves it.

Caffe is the slowest of the nine: downtempo, lounge, chill-out and nu-jazz, with a bias toward records that keep some jazz in the joints. A long extended mix sits as easily here as a trip-hop instrumental, tempos stay under the conversation, and nothing is built to make anyone look up from what they are doing. It works with the volume almost off, which is the point.