One of the harder tracks to pin down on the Monkey Radio playlist, “Count On You” has a bit of a history. It’s a stellar track with an infectious refrain. Danielle “Dan” Rowe delivers haunting vocals with a Boa-like vibe (a la “Duvet”).
The trick is that the band doesn’t have an album.
Per Wikipedia, Polaroid originally referred to a trio (Danielle Rowe, Lee Milleare, and John Horrocks); after Horrocks passed in 2001, Rowe used the moniker as a solo artist.
In 2003, Polaroid released a track, “So Damn Beautiful,” under Telstar, and it went viral (among other things, being used on Nip/Tuck). Three days before Polaroid’s debut album was due to release, Telstar went bankrupt. No label, no album, and Rowe retired the name and moved on to a new band (No Silence).
As a result, only a handful of Polaroid tracks exist: the aforementioned “So Damn Beautiful” single (2003), “Safety,” which appeared on Hed Kandi: Winter Chill 06.03, and our (earlier) Monkey Radio track, “Count On You,” from Hed Kandi: Winter Chill 06.02.
If you found the way
could you show me a sign,
would you hold the door
and let me run through
to a better place
that lets my mind,
helps my mind choose
I have to count on you.
The track is short, the vocals clean, and the hook catchy; it aligns with the female-vocalist-electronica vibe of the era, bringing to mind the likes of Boa and Portishead. That said, it has a less “gritty” vibe than either, putting this more in the downtempo genre than strict triphop.
While I haven’t found a digital release of “Safety,” the Monkey Radio track can be found on Bandcamp for streaming or purchase (as of June 2026):
]]>1995 is aptly named, if misleadingly so: released in 2020, it is supposedly the product of the duo finding old unreleased tapes in their studio and revamping them to modern standards. …But should this be in the playlist?
Peter Kruder and Richard Dorfmeister are legends. The K&D Sessions (another MR favorite) is required listening when it comes to chillhop, and that’s setting aside the duo’s excellent efforts with Tosca and Peace Orchestra, respectively. So a new release from the pair of them is worth celebrating.
That date is the source of my consternation: it’s after Monkey Radio went offline. The album is listed via the Spotify fan-created playlist, making the provenance less than certain—but as the original station was renowned for having hard-to-acquire or unreleased material, and the tapes existed, it is feasible that early versions of some of this material might have landed on the air. As such, I’ve left it in place on the station; it certainly fits the aesthetic.
This album is like a snapshot of 1995. The work fits cleanly alongside other K&D standards—it features multiple layers and thick reverb and ping-pong delays, alongside strong beats and jazz instrumentation. In particular, “Ambiente” is a highlight for me, with its smooth jazz shuffle and rasping melody.
So it sounds Monkey. Users have attributed it to Monkey. It might even be Monkey—so lacking the evidence, it remains in our playlist. Enjoy.
The stream is up and running. Hit play on the Groove@192kbps page, or point your player straight at it:
This first cut of the playlist is 1507 tracks deep — the bulk of what I’ve been able to track down and acquire so far. It’s not everything; the old station played a staggering, hard-to-pin-down range of music, much of which you’d only ever hear there. As I keep hunting down the rest — across digital stores, used CDs, and the occasional 12” — they’ll go up on the station too. Consider this a living archive that grows as the collection does.
If you want the long version of how a half-remembered internet radio station gets reconstructed from forum playlists and detective work, the deep dives cover the whole journey:
There are also longer write-ups on individual albums over in Reviews and Musings for the records that defined the sound, and more Deep Dives may be added as the mood strikes.
To be clear about what this is: the Monkey Radio Archive is an unofficial fan tribute, not the original station and not affiliated with it. The only goal here is to preserve (as faithfully as I can) the experience of the station that was the soundtrack of the early internet. It’s a labor of love, built by someone who just didn’t want that sound to disappear.
And, like the original, it runs ad-free. No spots, no interruptions: just the music. Pour something, hit play, and settle in.
Welcome back. Let’s groove.
]]>A collaboration between avant-garde jazz artist Toshinori Kondo and pioneering turntablist and Monkey Radio staple DJ Krush. Released in 1996 in Japan, and 1999 elsewhere. It received its first-ever repressing in 2024 on vinyl in honor of the third anniversary of Kondo’s passing.
Much of triphop leans on its jazz roots; this album basks in them. The sound is easy to listen to, but often unsettling – even upbeat pieces like the opening Toh-Sui have wistful notes mixed in, and much of the album is thick with barroom smoke and enough grit to make you feel it. Tracks like Shoh-Ka shuffle quietly with muted lines over reverb and drifting synth backdrops.
This is an album that rewards repeat listens–there’s more under the surface than the jazzy melodies imply at first blush.
This is a massive Ninja Tune double-album set of remixes. One disk is mixed by Coldcut and DJ Food; the other by DJ Krush. The master list at the time of this writing assigns a massive 32 tracks to this collection, making it the single largest number of Monkey Radio tracks you can get in a single purchase.
If attempting to purchase the “sound” of monkey radio, this is arguably one of the best purchases you can make to start your collection.
Cold Krush Cuts is comprised of 2 continuous-mix disks by DJs that drive the Monkey Radio sound. The first disk features an array of “dance” driven mixes, whereas Krush’s Disk 2 is more downtempo-driven. Both are stellar; they feature numerous artists from the Ninja Tune catalog that have become staples in their own rights (Herbaliser, DJ Vadim, Amon Tobin, and more). Hiphop elements are present throughout, but this remains digestible fare end to end; even tracks that weren’t present on Monkey Radio are worth the time for a listen.