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It first broadcast on 28 November 1991, on 94.5FM from Clapton, and 35 years on it still plays jungle and drum and bass on DAB and online.
On 28 November 1991, a pirate radio station called Kool FM made its first broadcast on 94.5FM from Clapton in north east London. Thirty five years later, the date is worth marking, because few stations have done more for jungle and drum and bass.
Wikipedia says Kool FM, also known as Kool London, is a former London pirate radio station that now broadcasts on DAB and online, playing jungle, drum and bass and old skool. It describes Kool as generally regarded as being instrumental in the development of the jungle music scene.
The station itself has said that it was the very first pirate station ever to play hardcore jungle. Writers on the scene have supported its importance: Simon Reynolds called it London's ruling pirate station in his account of the beginnings of jungle in Energy Flash, and in State of Bass Martin James considered it the single most important pirate station in jungle.
By late 1992, Kool started promoting its own events, which led to the founding of Jungle Fever in August 1993. Jungle Fever nights were held at venues including the Astoria and The Edge. The move from broadcasting to events is typical of how the scene grew: a station built an audience, then gave that audience somewhere to meet.
Records on the radio could reach people who never went to a rave. A listener in a flat in London, or a teenager with a tape recorder, could hear a DJ and an MC working together, and could learn what the tunes were called. For producers, hearing their dubplates on the radio was a first measure of whether a tune worked.
That sense of discovery is still central to the culture. Fans still hunt for track names, still swap recordings and still measure the quality of a scene by the shows it supports.
Kool is now on DAB and online, which means fans anywhere can tune in. Metalheadz, for example, has a show on the station, and the label has listed dates in recent months. For anyone interested in the history of jungle, listening to the station is a good way to connect with it.
The anniversary on 28 November is a fair excuse to find a show, listen from the start and think about how many careers began with a signal sent out over a city.
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