New York's CD 101.9FM is now a "Chill" station

If you don't already know, CD101.9 is a popular radio station that broadcasts out of New York City. They used to call themselves the "smooth jazz" station. The station has occupied one of my 12 radio station presets because it seems that the jazz genre is the only thing left to listen to that features musicianship. They have been playing instrumental jazz, vocal accompanied jazz and vocal songs turned into instumentals for years. RecentlyI was pleasantly surprised to find that they have begun to add in some "chill" to their usual jazz lineup.

So what is chill? It is a type of music that incorporates jazz, techno, hip-hop, sound samples and ambient styles. More commonly known as "chill out" music, there are many styles of chill that intermingle with each other: ambient, trip-hop, downtempo, lounge, progressive, acid jazz, space music. I have probably forgotten some, but the point is that it's a mixture of musical types more concerned with cool grooves and is not really heavy (there are exceptions). The styles overlap each other, and some of it fits into the jazz genre quite nicely.

I have been into this type of music for a while, probably since I got a cable modem. Once I had the power of high bandwidth, I could listen to high-quality streaming internet radio stations. I started out with a strictly ambient space music station then started getting into the stations that served up a mixture of downtempo, trip hop, and acid jazz styles. I made sure to listen to stations that either gave a playlist on the web or actually showed it in the text of the audio stream player. My favorite station these days is Groove Salad by SomaFM.com.

I started writing down the names of the songs and the musicians (not always considered "bands" in the traditional sense). The next thing I know, I am buying some compilations of chill out music at Borders. Although a friend at work introduced me to some ambient stuff and I had already bought a few space music albums, my first real chill out CD was the two disc compilation called "Winter Chill Vol.2" on the Water Music Records label. I was hooked. I started buying more comps, many of which happened to be on that same label... great stuff.

I put the file sharing programs to work and tried to collect more songs and continued buying CDs. The CDs I purchased started to be more band related... I mean that it was a CD by a single artist and not a compilation of various artists. I hit the mother lode this summer when I came upon a plug in for Winamp, an MP3 player, that allows you to record streaming MP3 broadcasts. The plug in is called Streamripper and it's awesome. As it records, it names the tracks for you including the band name and splits them into individual MP3 files. There is some overlap of the previous track, but hey... it's free music! I have about 20 CDs of MP3s recorded off the internet (each CD can hold about 10 hours of music). Some good, some bad, some really good!

I am mostly a heavy metal, hard rock, guitar virtuoso listening guy, but have gotten into female vocalists, jazz, classical, some soft stuff, alternative, grunge and even swing music over the years. When I talk to my heavy metal, hard rock listening friends about this chill out style of music, I always call it "that weird stuff I listen to."

I am glad to see some chill out artists getting main stream commercial radio play. CD 101.9 FM has started calling itself the "New York Chill" station and has begun rotating in music from Zero 7, Morcheeba, Thievery Corporation, Moby, Massive Attack, Mandalay, Nighmares on Wax, St. Germain, and Supreme Beings of Leisure. I know all these guys and own CDs by most of them.

I was also excited to hear songs by Thievery Corporation and Zero 7 while watching the movie Garden State. One of my favorite ambient groups, Delerium, has also had their songs make their way into a few movies and TV shows too. I would feel all hip for knowing this music that was used in an avant garde way in films.

So basically, I am excited about this. Music is so much fun, especially when you get bitten by the bug of a different style of music than you usually listen to. There are so many bands (check out this site) nowadays in so many genres, that the top 40 radio listeners are really missing out. Hey, they can have their Britney Spears... I sure don't want any of that... well... musically speaking.