Shoegaze is a genre built on excess: walls of guitar reverb, buried vocals, distortion pedals stacked three deep. It makes sense, then, that the community around it eventually needed its own dedicated radio outlet, and DKFM Shoegaze Radio has spent well over a decade being exactly that. DKFM Edge is its most forward-leaning stream, built specifically to surface what is new in the genre right now.
Born in the Shoegaze Rooms of Turntable.fm
DKFM's origin story is a genuinely unusual one for a radio station. According to the network's own account, its founder, who goes by DJ Heretic and is known offstage as Greg Wilson, cut his teeth as a regular DJ in the shoegaze-themed listening rooms of turntable.fm in the early 2010s, spinning tracks that ranged from Airiel to The December Sound. By the end of 2011 that groundwork had turned into an actual internet station, deliberately built without traditional call letters to set it apart from conventional radio branding.
A Station That Has Moved as Much as the Genre It Serves
DKFM's broadcast home has shifted repeatedly over the years, from Fresno to Los Angeles to Brussels and now to Toronto, a genuinely international path for a station built around a genre that itself originated in the UK before spreading through American and European indie scenes. Along the way, DKFM has co-sponsored DreamGaze Festivals in Los Angeles and San Francisco, and picked up industry recognition including Best Worldwide Single Stream Webcaster at the 2017 RAIN Awards.
What Makes Edge Different
Where the main DKFM stream mixes established shoegaze and dream pop names with newer acts, DKFM Edge is described by the network as its weekend new-music program taken to an extreme, a power rotation running 24/7 of the newest and freshest sounds in the genre. It exists for listeners who have already worked through the genre's classics and want to know what is happening in shoegaze and dream pop right now, not what happened in 1991.
A Genre That Rewards This Kind of Dedication
Shoegaze has enjoyed a real resurgence in recent years, pulled along by a new generation of bands discovering My Bloody Valentine and Slowdive through streaming rather than record store bins. A station built entirely around surfacing new releases in that space gives that resurgence somewhere to actually be heard, curated by people who have followed the genre since well before it was trending again.
Tune in to DKFM Edge on Radio Shuffle for a nonstop feed of the newest shoegaze and dream pop, curated by one of the genre's longest-running radio outlets.