BENT24
Premiered on KCRW on 14 November 2022
Role: Creator, Programmer, Audio transfer, Audio restoration, Audio editor
BENT24 is KCRW’s 24-hour, on-demand streaming channel featuring a shuffling playlist of original “SNAP” episodes (1982-1991), restored from DJ Deirdre O’Donoghue‘s original board tapes.
BENT24 traces the long arc of O’Donoghue’s musical obsessions, from the skeletal post-punk and new wave of the early ‘80s to the rise of “college rock” in the later half of the decade. From Philip Glass to Cocteau Twins, Touré Kunda to Tones On Tail, SNAP was often the first, and best, outlet for music from all corners of the globe.
There are few guides as passionate, erudite, and opinionated as O’Donoghue, whose voice and taste remain unparalleled in public and noncommercial radio. BENT24 takes listeners to the flash point of countless musical movements then just bubbling up from the underground – accompanied by her original playlists, announcements, and voiceovers, as heard live on air.
SNAP and BENT24 hearken back to an era when music discovery was an experience forged in real time, across car stereos, kitchen radios, and the unbounded imagination of its listeners. Greater than the sum of its parts, SNAP was a community which found expression in the liminal spaces where weird shit could get in. BENT24 relives that space through O’Donoghue’s extensive personal show archive, which brings the real-time experience of SNAP to the fearless music freaks of today.
SEE ALSO: Bent By Nature (Podcast), Bent By Nature (Archives)
