Pillaging the Airwaves

Pirate is a funny word. Olden day pirates are usually shown in either one of two ways; swashbuckling men of the sea, searching for hidden treasure buried under an arbitrary X. What’s wrong with the other letters, anyway? These sort pirates generally tend to light heartedly enjoy the exploits of the deep blue, making men walk the plank on their birthday and making rum-based Metropolitan cocktails. The other sort of pirates likes to decimate whole fishing towns. They brutally rape its citizens and take all of its resources and money before spitting at everyone and sailing off, laughing at how weak and raped their latest conquest is.

These days, pirates are either AK- 47 toting East Africans or they’re taking over the airwaves in your local area. Rinse FM is obviously the latter.

In 1994, DJ Geeneus set the station up in a secret location in East London. During the nineties, pirate radio was getting a pretty bad rap. There were news stories claiming that to gain access to the stations themselves, DJs would abseil in, with all their records in a bag. Obviously this is completely ludicrous, and about as plausible as them getting in by being sucked through a giant straw, but the viewing public undoubtedly eat it up and radio piracy was seen as more of a threat than it actually was. Every interview conducted with pirate radio heads got the same result: they were in it for the music, and that was it.

And this is certainly why Rinse was in it. The station was an integral part of the progression of Grime, a brand new genre of music straight from London.
An unnaturally dark progression from UK Garage, combining elements of Dancehall and Jungle, Grime is the truest sound of the City, representing its underbelly in an unflinching and uncensorable way. It allowed people to discover talents that perhaps they didn’t know they had, and reflected how they felt about their surroundings, about their lives and what they saw, what they wanted to be. Wiley, perhaps the strongest and most prominent member of the Grime scene, got his time to shine on Rinse FM. He, along with other early Grime artists like Dizzee Rascal and the Newham Generals, brought Grime to the listening public, and from there it blew up. Underground MCs were featured on various DVDs like ‘Risky Roadz’ and ‘Aim High’. The stations continuous support of this new and exciting music sealed its spot as arguably the most important pirate radio station in the UK.

Even legendary BBC DJ John Peel showered it with praise, saying “When I'm in London I listen to the pirates as much as I can. There's a station I like called Rinse FM, which is somewhere in the area banded by Kiss FM and Classic FM.”
In 2005 something strange happened. Ofcom decided that Rinse was not worth the airwaves it was broadcasting on, and disconnected its radio transmitter. One of the stations DJs, Slimzee, got tarnished with and Anti Social Behavioural Order (ASBO). Quite what is anti social about a radio station is beyond me. Maybe if you were driving a porous skinned child with leukaemia too close to the station and the radio waves shook the very bone marrow out of their dying femurs, but that’s not going to happen, is it?



A similar phenomenon to Grime has happened more recently to electronic dance genre Dubstep. As with Grime, Rinse FM saw the rising demand in this new, darker sound. With its wobbling bass and addictive drops, dupstep soon became huge in the London underground rave scene. Genre pioneers like Skream and Kode9 were frequently featured on the station. These DJs, among others, started the ball rolling on something that, in a few years, would grow to be one of the most popular types of music in the UK, and is on its way to achieving worldwide recognition. Rinses participation in the development and propulsion of this new music caught the attention of Radio 1 DJ Mary Anne Hobbs, whose consistent championing of dubstep brought it into the public consciousness.
What’s in the future of this innovative station? Thankfully, the station was given an FM broadcasting license in June 2010. This meant that they could broadcast new and exciting music, along with the classics that made the station so popular in the first place, legally. The station has become almost of a brand itself, releasing self branded mix CDs from resident DJs. They were also fundamental in the recent success of singer Katy B, whose song ‘Katy on a Mission’ (Produced by Benga) reached number 5 in the charts.

Rinse continues to display the best of Londons electronic music; from dubstep to grime, house to funky- something for every musical palette. Will it be the birthplace of another rich sound of the City? There’s only one way to find out. Stay Tuned.