“Music will abstract and bring [an] end to this terrible war.”
—from Air Raid Siren podcast, episode PodilWhat good can auditory abstraction do? For the online radio station Gasoline Radio in Kyiv, this hypothetical question has turned into practical and symbolic work: how to empower the listener and use the equivocality of sonic formats to promote Ukrainian voices across physical and symbolic borders; and how to broadcast—and respond to—a plurality of human experiences.
A non-commercial media platform, Gasoline Radio aims “to expand [their] listeners’ musical knowledge, build a community, and put Ukrainian musicians in a global context” (Gasolineradio.com, 2023). Launched just a few weeks before Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Gasoline has since become a household name in alternative electronic music culture. With a variety of sonic content, worldwide collaborations, and storytelling formats, it has showcased famous electronic scene names, hosted podcasts and talk shows, and organized live events before having to close their physical studio in 2023. Now available exclusively online through their website, or SoundCloud platform, Gasoline guests continue to archive and explore various music traditions: from “A thousand and one tracks” on musical phenomena from different parts of our world” to “Air Raid Siren,” “a reflective canvas from the music of Ukrainian underground sound producers of experimental music and their stories about the damn war in our country” (@airraidsirenlive, 2022; Gasolineradio.com, 2023). One recent work is a documentary film on the musical tradition of the Carpathian Mountains, “Spadok” (Ukrainian for “Heritage”). While Gasoline explores the boundaries and potentials of sound and media, its focus often returns to how music brings people together, across generations and musical genres. “Spadok” underscores the legacy of tradition, the relevance of technology, and the resilience of musically heterogeneous Ukraine.
In the ongoing context of war, Radio Gasoline aims to educate, build community, and reach international audiences. Born out of a broader community radio movement and legacy across Europe, it has since become part of a larger fight for epistemic justice and cultural recognition, particularly poignant since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. It thus responds to a symbolic call to contribute to the Ukrainian cause by any means or expertise a listener might have: “kozhen na svoiemu mistsi,” Ukrainian for “everyone in their own place.” As many artists devised new critical tools to raise awareness through music, online radio media offered a strategic way to work both internally and externally: to make sense out of the moment through showcasing local voices, to create an opportunity for Ukrainian self-reflexivity, and to contribute materially through various fundraisers. Internationally, Gasoline works to build solidarity through existing translocal networks of alternative culture and media. Individual hosts, collaborative projects and shared broadcasts, small alternative DIY cultural infrastructures, and media actors escape mainstream modes of music distribution to offer a poignant case study of solidary-oriented cultural mobilization, even as Gasoline Radio speaks directly to Ukrainian diaspora, fans, and radio listeners.
But perhaps Radio Gasoline's most significant accomplishment is establishing a real-time archive by collecting musical practices, oral histories, and artistic responses to war. At a time when culture and creators are being destroyed every moment, such an archive gains an existential dimension and historical significance. Through curating a rich body of sound works, Gasoline resists apathy, cynicism, or burnout. This small-scale project with broad reach raises the question of what sonic media can do that other media cannot. It blurs the lines between communities of listeners and creators, and gives the former the sense of belonging to an alternative local scene—a sense of being closer to Ukraine.
