Archiving pirate radio station Kool FM

Long-time Kool London listener here.

The acquisition by Rinse was a real shock. I'd spent years listening to a proper pirate station over the internet (I was too far from the actual transmitters in London) and being part of a chatroom…and it was all taken away without warning. From memory, it really upset me. This station and its ethos was such a part of my life for so long, and it just…went away.

As I understand it, Rinse cherry-picked the Kool London DJs they wanted to continue, and a notable number of the remaining talent went on to form / join Underground Bass[1], get a stream online[2], and get on with things. A lot of the behind-the-scenes folks also went to UB, and the DIY spirit lives on.

I recognise around 10 of the current Rinse Kool roster from the Kool London era, and around 20 of the current Underground Bass roster are from the Kool London era.

[1] https://www.undergroundbass.uk

[2] https://listen.undergroundbass.com:8804/stream

I came from Northern England, and could get 5 or maybe 7 pirate stations on a good day from my room - only 1 or 2 of which would be my sort of music. In 1999 I moved to London, and bought a really really good (1970s) radio receiver, and couldn't believe the number (and quality) of pirate stations - every bit of the spectrum seemed to be covered. I had a mini-disk player, and used to record some of my favourite shows - but years later sold the player and labelled all the disks as 'blank'.

It felt such an exciting time to hear about new tracks, artists and club nights all across London - but then again I was 20 and had the time and money to go out.

This is a timely intersection for a search I've been doing for archives of the Quiet Storm shows of the 90s from Power 99 FM in Philly. At the start of my search I didn't realize how ephemeral radio was treated. Growing up I listened to tapes of Abbott and Costello, The Shadow, and dozens of other shows. I just assumed there were recordings of everything. I found hundreds of KCMU and WFMU shows I recorded from live streams, when I wasn't living near enough to get the terrestrial signal. And the odd LPFM / pirate broadcasts. It might be time to build an archival WARK.fm

If you’re interested in the history of Kool and the wider London pirate radio scene I can warmly recommend Fracture’s 0860 project: https://0860.fm/

Thank you for sharing this. Touches the heart in two different aspects. Recording radio shows on tapes and listening them with players and shitty earphones before CDs/mp3 players were a thing. Still thankful to my young self for the amount of weird and awesome music.. And then obviously junglist massive. Big up!

The stream is properly great!! https://radio.originalkoolarchives.com/listen/original_kool_...

Awesome. I think this is the radio browser pointer: https://www.radio-browser.info/history/973c30a5-a178-4daf-89...

*Mandem

Off topic but how were pirate radios able to operate while people with sets would have vans going around and fining people for not having a TV license?

In the US sometimes you’d have pirate radio off the coast so as to avoid “jurisdiction” though I’m not sure how effective that was.

Not to be confused with the actual radio station in Arizona called KOOL-FM.