Laurie Brown and Andy Sheppard are the host and producer, respectively, of The Signal on CBC Radio 2. Since debuting in March of 2007, the program has evolved to provide a highly distinctive listening experience that offers two skillfully-curated hours of late-night contemporary music to listeners across Canada — and, via the internet, the world — that’s neither predictable nor easily genrefiable. Brown accompanies Sheppard’s unusual sonic selections with commentary that’s long impressed fans with its friendliness, intimacy and wealth of odd stories. Colin Marshall originally conducted this conversation on the public radio program and podcast The Marketplace of Ideas. [MP3, with music] [iTunes link]
I got hooked on this show when an American friend of mine who moved to Vancouver sent me a link and said, “You've got to hear this show they've got going up here.” I listened to it, and I was pretty immediately hooked. I've tried to spread the word to people who aren't Canadian and thus don't have a great knowledge of what the CBC puts out and why they should listen to it even if they aren't Canadian. But I've had a little problem describing what sort of music The Signal plays. All I can say is that “it's really good” and “you've got to listen.” “Modern” comes to mind, “contemporary” comes to mind, but these are vague words. What do you guys call it?
Laurie: It's just as hard for us as it is for you. This has been a real head-scratcher since the show went on the air. We've got lots of different names, and because we play so many genres of music, it's really easy to spout off a whole bunch of different things: “Oh, it's ambient, it's electronic, it's electronica, it's sort of freaky folk, it's avant-garde jazz, it's post-rock…” You can list and list and list. The thing that makes the most sense to me is, just think about late-night radio and think about the kind of music and the places you really want your brain to go at 10:00 through to midnight. “Late-night radio,” for me, makes more sense than anything else. Andy?
Andy: It's a trick, isn't it? We're programming a lot of music that exists at the intersection of different styles. I think that's the big thing I'm looking for. We're not going to play straight folk music or straight singer-songwriter or neo-classical music but music where the lines cross. You'll have a classical musician paired with a DJ or a world musician and an electronic artist. Those kind of crossover intersections I find the most compelling, and it's one of the ways I frame the idea of contemporary music. It's how people are making music now. What are they doing differently now, so it sounds like it's coming from this time?
Read more »