Tim Sweeney brings his legendary NY-based DJ mix show,
Beats In Space, to Apple Music in a refreshed format starting Tuesday 2nd November at 2am GMT. The two-hour weekly show includes a 1-hour mix from Tim, a 1-hour guest DJ mix, and an interview every episode, debuting with Planningtorock. The show is the first of its kind for Apple Music, and after streaming the show live for free, the mixes will live exclusively on the DJ Mixes page, available to Apple Music subscribers.
Long before the show was hosting exclusive mixes from electronic music royalty such as Carl Craig, Andrew Weatherall, DJ Harvey, and Four Tet, Sweeney was a college freshman with a 1-4 am slot on WNYU—on its now-defunct AM signal. “It really only broadcast to the dormitories,” Sweeney tells Apple Music. “I didn’t tell people I was on AM, basically. I just told guests to come on the radio—and people did!”
But you don’t make it to 1,000 episodes, recorded and broadcast literally every single week for more than 20 years, by faking anything for long. Over the course of its time on WNYU, Beats in Space took adventurous listeners on an exploration of techno, house, ambient, and experimental’s outer reaches; for the DJs and producers who defined those genres, performing on the show became a rite of passage.
The early vision for Beats in Space was heavily informed by the UK’s pirate radio scene of the ‘90s. “My brother brought back these tapes from London, and I would just listen to those all the time,” says Sweeney. “And I thought, ‘Why is this not on the radio here in the US? Why can’t I find something like this?’ It was this feeling of playing something that you couldn’t find anywhere else. And you were letting people in on something that you loved and you knew should be bigger.”
Two decades later, now on Apple Music 1, Beats in Space continues to blur all sorts of musical lines, particularly with its guests, who’ll provide an exclusive one-hour mix for the show, following an hour set from Sweeney. “I want to try find music that moves people,” he says. “How do I take this stuff that I love and find more people who say, ‘Look, this is awesome. I want you to hear it.’ I love connecting those dots.”
Tim says: “After 21 years on college radio in NYC, it felt time to graduate and take the next step to bring things to a wider audience. I still have the freedom to choose the music and guests DJ’s I want for the show, but now I have a team of people to help make that vision a reality. I’m really excited about taking the radio show on the road. We can record at a Beats In Space festival in Japan, a warehouse party in São Paulo or use one of the many Apple Music studios (New York, LA, London, Paris, Berlin and Tokyo). It’s a chance to really showcase what’s happening in dance music culture around the world. I’ve been traveling as a DJ for the past 20 years and bringing back what I’ve found to the radio in New York, but now I have a chance to show people what is happening in different cities straight from the source. It opens up so many opportunities to explore what is happening in this thriving and global dance music scene.”
Hear Beats In Space live for free every Tuesday at 2am GMT on Apple Music 1: apple.co/_BeatsInSpace.
