Get the latest gossip
Station to station: the European language DJs taking radio to new realms
Cian Ó Cíobháin’s show, ‘one of the most radical in the world’, has been beguiling listeners in Irish for 25 years. Others, from Warsaw to Lyon, offer similar musical adventures
Presented by Cian Ó Cíobháin from the Atlantic-hugging west Kerry coast, a fair stretch from my home in rural Northern Ireland, An Taobh Tuathail(“The Other Side”) still feels like a portal to a far-flung realm. Broadcast every weekday since May 1999, Ó Cíobháin expertly blends leftfield music: it has championed ambient and electronic pioneers such as Mexican composer Murcof and the late Japanese musician Susumu Yokota, and spotlighted the curveballing instrumentalism of Irish artists including cellist Eimear Reidy and revered Limerick producer Naive Ted. Fiehe’s career began in the early 1980s as a saxophonist for the alternative rock icons Geier Sturzflug, and his three-hour weekly show, drawing from a personal collection of over 60,000 records, reveals his peerless curation, insatiable spirit and storytelling flair within German pop culture.
Or read this on The Guardian