Welcome back to UFO news.
A weekly selection of news, music, releases and essays.
On episode 50 of the podcast we announced Nick Hollins, Alex Guy, aiio and LGHT are hosts of the first shows on the UFO network. Our next steps are establishing a podcasts network and developing the music side of an onchain radio station and magazine at ufo.fm.
Let's introduce a few hosts. Their shows will surprise and delight, along with other shows joining the network.
Alex is head of Growth at Zerion and recently launched Still Here. A show to explore his curiosity talking with people who are founders and builders. Through all the ups and downs of crypto. Answering the question of what motivates and inspires them. Why they’re still here.
aiio is a researcher, community builder and writer bridging across web3 and the underground electronic music and arts communities in Copenhagen. She writes about the concept of space, linking it to human culture, existence, and the need for adaptive ecosystems.
LGHT is an artist, designer, writer, and technologist based in the US. Creator of the Hypercultures essay series as well as co-founding Based Management. His work focuses on protocol design, the science of digital language/memetics, and zero to one acceleration of tech primitives and adoption.
How Did UFO Start?
It's likely you haven't heard the origin stories, we don't much talk about ourselves. Let's rewind. UFO went live in September 2022 when I returned home to Byron Bay in Australia. I'd been travelling for a while in Europe and met amazing people including future UFO radio hosts Alex Guy and aiio at ETH Barcelona.
Ivano Salonia and myself have been working together since 2020 and he was in from the jump as Art Director. We designed the UFO brand with inspirations from retro psychedelia, music and science fiction. The purpose was to establish a radio station, magazine and onchain collective.
This project is paying homage to the legendary and short-lived UFO Club created by Joe Boyd and John "Hoppy" Hopkins in December 1966. The nightclub famous for light shows and happenings. Plays and poetry readings. Staging artists like Jimi Hendrix, Pink Floyd and Yoko Ono at 31 Tottenham Court Road in central London, a few blocks from the British Museum.
Just imagine what it was like to be at the UFO Club. The people you would meet.
This scene is inspiring to what we're doing. We're here for similar reasons.
In this time, John Dunbar, Peter Asher and Barry Miles had founded the Indica Gallery which ran from 1965 to 1967. Their group published the International Times underground newspaper which is said to have inspired Jann Wenner visiting London in his early 20s before returning to San Francisco and creating Rolling Stone.
They had connections to the UFO Club and there are phenomenal print ads which ran in IT.
John Dunbar is an artist who was married to Marianne Faithfull and he was the one who introduced John Lennon to Yoko Ono at their gallery. Barry was friends with The Beatles, Allen Ginsberg and members of the Beat Generation and has written books about the 1960s.
These are the people spaced around the studio in Abbey Road holding pencils with tape loops running around for Tomorrow Never Knows. Rick Rubin had Peter Asher on Tetragrammaton recently telling stories from the London scene. Casually seeing the Rolling Stones every Monday night in a small club.
For current day outlets we like NTS, The Lot Radio, Song Exploder and the Marginalian.
We're here in this ecosystem of web3 projects and collectives like Songcamp, Metalabel, Nouns, FWB, Purple, Seed Club, Cheeks Collective, BLVKHVND, Folklore, Public Assembly, wavWRLD, thepark, Builder DAO, JPG, Gitcoin, Forefront, Take Up Space, Future Primitive, Based Management and many others.
It's an onchain movement on protocols like Ethereum, Optimism, Base, Zora, Farcaster and Lens.
Why Radio?
Before starting in crypto in 2017, I was a radio host and producer for 10 years in Sydney. Presenting an independent music show on FBi Radio, contributing as a music programmer, videographer and venue booker.
These were formative times and I experienced what a collective signal for music, arts and ideas looks like with 100+ DJs. Radio stations are a place to find where culture is happening in a city. Art and music is celebrated. Young people get a start in creative fields. Anyone with a radio dream can make it happen.
A show on the radio is a finite resource. There's only so much time in a day and it kinda means something to be on the air. It's a live signal. There's something cool about that.
It's been a wild dream to create a radio station.
UFO 01
I was talking about radio, music and the sixties when I met Charlie Waterhouse in London in 2022. We'd first met a few months before through ASSEMBLY workshops organized by Metalabel. He's an early contributor at Extinction Rebellion who helped design their art and iconography.
The plan was to record the first podcast at his office in Brixton, but it was too noisy. Instead we talked off-mic about music, what's happening in web3, the media, politics, climate and behind the scenes at Extinction Rebellion before heading to the pub. I flew home two days later.
Once a stable internet connection was set up from a farm house in the Australian countryside, Charlie and me sat down to record UFO 01. We've been on the air since then.
Charlie is a co-founder of Hard Art with people like Clare Farrell, Brian Eno and Es Devlin who are getting ready to stage The Fête of Britain, a four-day celebration of collaboration and imagination in the face of the great challenges of our time, Feb 22 — 25 in Manchester’s Aviva Studios.
Latest podcasts
49 Songwriting, Music and the Internet in 2024 — Leo Pastel
50 A Collective Signal with UFO — Alex Guy, aiio, LGHT
06 DAOs & Investing in Web3 Social — Jakub Rusiecki
Margo Guryan — Someone I Know
Jackson C. Frank — Blues Run The Game
The Pennywhistlers — Cotton Mill Girls
Otis Redding — (Sittin' On) The Dock Of The Bay
The Association — Never My Love
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UFO is an onchain radio network. A club for music, arts and ideas. Subscribe to be in the loop.
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