SPACE TRASH IS ALIVE AND BROADCASTING FROM TEXAS

 

Somewhere in Denton, Texas, a low-power radio station is apparently still broadcasting Space Trash.

KUZU-LP’s Friday-night program Nos/Otrx, hosted by Sashenka Lopez under the name Nepantlera de La, describes itself as a mixture of nature, industrial electronics and non-conforming artists. The station promises “Experimental Radio,” “Tragic Collage,” “Radical Waves,” “Cymatic Magic” and, most importantly, Space Trash.

This is not major news.

That is exactly why I like it.

KUZU grew out of Denton’s tiny Real Waves 1670 AM scene, where Lopez previously hosted Fake Parts. The whole operation developed from the kind of low-power, highly local radio culture that survives largely because nobody involved seems particularly interested in becoming Clear Channel.

The phrase Cymatic Magic also turns out to contain some actual physics.

Cymatics is the visualization of sound vibrations through physical material. A classic example is the Chladni plate: sprinkle sand across a metal surface, vibrate it at particular frequencies, and the grains organize themselves into intricate geometric patterns along the plate’s nodal lines. In other words, sound temporarily becomes visible.

That makes the phrase perfect for this kind of radio, whether Lopez means it scientifically or poetically.

Noise becomes pattern. Static becomes texture. Electronics become weather.

And “Space Trash” becomes a perfectly legitimate genre because somebody with a transmitter says it is.

FMPU

The strange-radio ecosystem never disappeared.

It just moved toward the edges of the dial, where nobody has bothered to teach the algorithm what any of this is supposed to mean.

Long may the Space Trash transmit.