PrintIf a radio station broadcasts in the middle of the night, and no one is around to tune in, does it still make a sound?
It’s around 3:30 a.m. on a Tuesday morning and the WKCR office is enveloped in a dream state induced by “Transfigured Night,” a program featuring the genre of “new music.”
Narine Atamian, a sophomore in CC and one of the heads of the new music department at WKCR, tells listeners in her smooth radio voice about the Japanese noisecore band The Gerogerigegege. “That was ‘White Sperm, White Christmas,’” she says, before putting down her headphones, and resignedly focusing her attention on language homework and a very late vegan dumpling dinner.
The room fills up with the sound of a phone ringing, a conversation in Japanese, and, eventually, sex grunts. “This sort of noise scene came out best in Japan, because it’s such a repressed sort of culture they have. All these groups from the late ’80s, early ’90s—most of them formed through a[n] … underground S&M culture,” Atamian explains to me. “Because it was sort of an underground scene, and because Japan is geographically small, all these musicians have all these incredible collaborative works.”
“Collaborative” seemed to take on a new meaning as the high-pitched moans began to quicken. “I don’t think they call this music.” Atamian explains, “they just call this noise.”
The night began hours earlier with Willie Avendano’s Latin jazz hour. Avedano shares the control room with two enthusiastic first-years, there to learn the programming process as part of the station’s interning program.
Before being authorized to program on their own, newcomers must intern at several departments to learn the fundamentals of programming and prepare to pass a Federal Communications Commission licensing exam—basically, what to play, how to play it, and what not to say on air. “Most people who are involved in the station have a freakishly broad knowledge, based on all sorts of music,” Atamian says.
Possibly due to lack of Columbia funding, the station décor is a tribute to the 1970s, with old-school AV equipment. The giant laminate set-up features brightly colored buttons and the walls are adorned with jazz posters and one notably colorful psychedelic interpretation of Johann Sebastian Bach. But the newly re-upholstered bright red chair designated for interviewees is the station’s crown jewel. “Dizzy Gillespie has sat there. Every mayor of New York except Bloomberg has sat there,” Atamian says.
WKCR keeps an impressive list of famous figures that have graced the studio on a 45 handed out at their annual gala—everyone from John Cage to Wilco, Allen Ginsberg, and Betty Friedan.
The two interns head out at 1 a.m. as Avendano finishes his set, and Dan Malinsky, a junior in CC, enters the scene. Together Malinsky and Atamian head the new music department of WKCR, which means they specialize in our generation’s avant-garde creations and in pulling all-nighters for the station.
“Transfigured Night” begins with a static that initially sounds like a malfunction until it starts to pulsate. “KCR plays underground music, and in new music, we play underground underground music,” Atamian boasts. And the term “late-night caller” is familiar to the two programmers. “There’s a woman that’s convinced that her mother has lost 20 fiancés in World War I,” Atamian laughs. “She’s bat-shit insane.”
As the static ebbs and flows, Malinsky and Atamian banter about programming. Malinsky says, “You have to skip the beginning, or it talks about pussy,” to which Atamian responds, “I don’t see why you have to do that.” A little later, Atamian asks, “Can I play ‘Breaking the Plastic Hymen’ next?” They pass around a record called “Homogenized Terrestrials.”
Static and kinky band names aside, WKCR is, in some ways, the same as any life-sucking extracurricular. Programmers mention that it destroys their GPA and takes over their social life. And WKCR-cest? Atamian and Malinksy answer with a simultaneous “yes.”
Tonight, or, rather, this morning, it’s Malinsky’s turn to leave early. “I’m going to get seven hours of sleep, maybe even eat some oatmeal before class,” he kids Atamian, who continues to prepare for her 9 a.m. Armenian vocabulary quiz. “Now he’s just being mean,” she says.
At moments like these, Atamian justifies what many students may see as being “too dedicated” with WKCR’s lofty goals. “The point [of the station] is to bring people stuff that is really high quality and that they would have not found themselves otherwise,” Atamian says. WKCR is not a free-form station where programmers can talk about and play whatever they want: it is dedicated to providing a well-thought-out and diverse programming schedule encompassing many different genres. The station is one of few that diverges from either top-40 playlists or incredibly genre-specific niche sations.
Atamian says the goal of the new music department is to “showcase talent that there really isn’t that much space for on any airwaves. ... We exclusively bring in these people, the most avant-garde artists that are pushing the limits. They don’t get play until they’re more established, so we have them come in when they’re still beginning.”
“It’s the only reason people would do a show at 3 a.m.,” Avendano says, speaking to his experience: “People who do that have a pure passion for music.”