Le MellotronLe Mellotron

Le Mellotron takes its name from the tape-replay keyboard and then borrows the metaphor wholesale: a music box, in its own words demanding and accessible at once, whose contents never stop moving. Bertrand Niquel started it in Paris in 2007 and still runs it, turning what began as a blog into a station on air around the clock. The brief has never narrowed — eras, countries and styles are all treated as one territory, and the stated aim is simply to pass on whatever the music is built from.

Residents cover a lot of ground: WheelUP on broken beat, Haseeb Iqbal on deep reggae and dub, Doni Kis on soulful bass and groove house, plus a Nomad Series recorded away from Paris that brought in Frente Cumbiero's psychedelic cumbia. The front page hands each featured record to the artist who made it, along with their own note on what went into it.