Radio (terrestrial or online) is best when delivering a rich-discovery stream of music that repeatedly makes you say, “Who is that?” and “I’ve got to hear more of that band.” When those revelations happen with nearly every song, you know you’ve found something special, and that was our experience with La Noche del Hombre Lobo. (Night of the Werewolf.)
The 90s-style website is difficult to navigate (especially for English speakers, but even Spanish-reading listeners might be perplexed), so CLICK HERE for the Play module.
Night of the Werewolf is an Internet station in Barcelona that plays an atmospheric mix of jazz, funk, dub, urban and hip-hop. It calls itself “Indie Creative Commons radio” — Creative Commons being a self-licensing system that establishes a template of rights for use, usually free of charge. Using Creative Commons as a major content source ensures the music will be off the beaten path.
The programmers have great taste. We were lunging for a music-ID app during several hours of listening. The app could not always recognize the tracks (that is really off the path), but among the artists we surfaced were Univeria Zekt, Lokua, Kognitif, Mde Click, Bangguru, Diversion Voice, Colin Odwyer, Elenika, Musetta, The Easton Ellises, and Spisek. That was at night. In a morning stretch of jazz programming we heard Estrada Nagrania, Olddog, Les Gaucher Quintette, Melinda Ligeti, Kior Teh, and The Slowdowns.
As adventurous as La Noche is, we found the music unintrusive in the best way — grooving along with a work-supportive vibe, grabbing our attention with excellence, not noise.