A brief history of the longest-running show on Rocket Radio

Words & Images by Francesco Anderloni @ffander

When Rocket Radio was launched in 2014, the broadcast schedule was definitely not as packed as it is today: shows were streaming live from the founders’ apartment in Veronetta - our First HQ - usually in the second half of the week, outside of business hours, when selectors and artists could find the time.

Almost immediately, the founders realized that the Radio needed a way to cohesively bring the listeners from the shows of the previous week to the new one, maintaining the same curation standard as the other transmissions while being a more laid back listening experience, sort of showcasing the variety of sounds and styles of the different selectors featured during the week: this is how UNMIXED was born.

In Italy, Monday is usually a very dull day: many shops, bars and restaurants are closed for a deserved day of rest after the hectic weekend. People return to schools and offices and there is not much going on in the city. It only made sense to kickstart UNMIXED on a Monday evening - to act as a sort of decompression agent for listeners, while keeping them engaged on what was to come on the airwaves later in the week.

The first episodes were veeeeery loose: Manuel and Michele, two of the founders, got together just a few minutes before starting the broadcast, each with a sketch of what they were going to play in mind, and alternated at the decks for the hour producing a freeform flow of music, with the main intention of not making the listeners’ monday any more dull - quite the opposite. You could listen to a Muslimgauze track followed by the latest SOPHIE banger, fading into some DJ Screw or Kerri Chandler - nothing was out of bounds. And as you can guess by the name, the focus was on the selections and not the mixing - the initial graphic content to accompany the show reflects this aspect, in a very distinctive way.

*Initial graphic designs for UNMIXED as showcased in the Broadcast Archive at rocketradiolive.com*

The show was being run like clockwork, every monday. Just after a few weeks, two more day-1 RR contributors, Francesco and Leonardo, joined the UNMIXED team, adding even more flair to the selections. Week after week, UNMIXED became more and more structured: a briefing was being held about an hour before the start of the broadcast, usually accompanied by some not-so-fine wine, to produce an approximate setlist and drive the passing of the musical baton between the selectors.

More and more sonic media were inserted in the mix: records, tapes, SoundCloud promos, movie clips and dialogues from YouTube, live FX..

Slowly the UNMIXED name became unfaithful as the show became a more thought-out artifact, with a defined progression across styles, usually starting slow with some Ambient, Soul or Hip Hop and finishing with more 4/4-oriented music, with a heck of a lot more mixing going on - at some point, a custom-made plugin to pitch YouTube videos was deployed in order to beatmatch them to other audio sources.

The opening of Rocket Radio Veronetta in 2015 was a revolution for many of the regular selectors on our airwaves, as well as new ones that have joined through the years: the capability of playing in a studio, with dedicated mixing equipment and the possibility to invite guests or performing in front of a small audience was a game changer, and definitely fueled the interest in the Radio for many artists as well as the public.

For UNMIXED, however, nothing much changed: the show was still run on a Monday evening, while the HQ was closed to the public, and the process was the same: get together an hour before, draft a tracklist, have a drink, go crazy. It allowed the selectors behind the shows to maintain the consistency to stream week in and week out, very rarely missing the appointment.

Being the longest-running show on Rocket Radio, UNMIXED was at the forefront of the Radio’s evolution for years, while benefiting from it too - there were UNMIXED DJs gigs at clubs and events, impromptu live additions and new contacts with artists that then performed at the Radio.

As more and more people got involved with Rocket Radio in all its incarnations - the digital realm and the multiple studios we opened across Italy - UNMIXED slowed down. After having paved the way for a long time, it broadcasted less and less often to leave space to new additions to the regular programming and time to new initiatives. Officially, it’s not over yet - UNMIXED 99 is the last episode out, and we’ve been dreaming of a legendary 100th episode multiple times… we’ll see what the future will reserve for UNMIXED, but for now, thanks for sticking with us!