...but if you don't want to hear any DJs, then why not just put your ipod on shuffle?

Or is it that feeling of being connected to the world you enjoy, without the world getting in the way of good music?

listening to the radio when abroad, for all the reasons you mention. Plus, not having to hear an English accent whilst on holiday is a joy.

... but, personally, I do prefer song lyrics in English.

... as I did, once, in Paris for 5 months, was being able to sit in a cafe, surrounded by people, and not understand what they were saying. Used to like some French telly-especially the oh-so intellectual debates-for similar reasons.

But I do think it all depends on how much you hear what people say in the first place-and people seem to vary hugely in this. My partner grew up in a very noisy home, and is superb at shutting out chatter, yet finds distant traffic noise really offputting. I am the reverse. I think this is not unconnected to whether you hear the words and/or the music etc etc.

I love encountering something I don't understand. In fact I will actively seek it out if possible....as long as I know where to look (or hear) of course. Too much sensory information is delivered in an homogenised or standardised way. Even Spotify is providing music in a compartmentalised form; it's all about ease of use and access.

So I can empathise with a yearning to find music in a unique way, a way in which I am presented with very few clues as to the whys and wherefores of the selections being made.

I suppose I'm saying that I want to get away from music as solely a comfort zone, away from listening to it simply as a salve for what ails me, away from it being just a welcome distraction.

I long for the brain I had as a boy when it was an adventurous and unprejudiced sponge with so many neuron paths unmade and untrodden and when music seemed forever an infinte possibility, my limitations solely being those of time and money.

With Spotify - and I do love Spotify - it's all there at the touch of a button. But there is so much to be gained by finding music in untypical situations and uncertain environments, the places where it can imprint itself beyond just what is heard, where it mixes with excitement, trepidation, adrenaline and maybe even doubt; the places where the emotional impact is heightened because the discovery is unique by virtue of environment and state of mind.

...(The Italian TV channel) was my fav channel when I first started watching Telewest cable TV. The quiz shows were great - didn't have a clue what was going on!

... and thought you were talking about that. Quite frankly the discussion on The Measurement Problem In Physics might as well be in French for all the sense I can glean from it.

Can I recommend a jolly romp of a book on this topic? Fi Glover wrote a travel book called I Am An Oil Tanker about visiting local radio stations all over the world. It may be out of print but I reckon it'll be on Amazon Marketplace.

See if you can find Radio Tres from Spain, they do a superb evening classic rock show, with lots of Hombre Peel style chin-stroking discussion twixt songs in hushed reverential tones, all in fabulously accented Spanish, i.e. unintelligible to me, as I have previously enthused here:

http://www.wordmagazine.co.uk/content/go-mild-country-holiday-playlists#...

There's a Russian band called Theodor Bastard. Apparently they started off like some sort of Einstürzende Neubauten-ish industrial noiseniks, but by the time I heard any of their stuff, an album called "Pustota", they'd become a sort of world music/trip hop thing with Dead Can Dance-y vocals all sung in - presumably - Russian.

The next thing I found by them was a live album recorded in Germany and some of the vocals were now in English and boy did they detract from it. Where once there were evocative foreign soundscapes, there was now the sound of someone trying desperately to reach the the lyrical heights of Wayne Hussey.

Pustota is still great though.

The very first time I went to the USA I thought their radio was fantastic. The reality is it is a damn sight worse than ours with the exception of some college radio stations. I am pretty sure in retrospect that I based my judgement on the fact that they were playing records that I didnt hear on British Radio stations and therefore the newness of it coloured my judgement. Pretty soon it became obvious that their radio is more formulaic, plays stuff on heavier rotation and has more bloody irritating adverts than any of our commercial radio stations. I am pretty sure that if you listen to FIP often enough it will lose some of that sheen.

one of my flatmates would tune into a station that was very eclectic in terms of its musical output... one evening I heard Ian Dury and the Blockheads, Nick Drake, ELP and Miles Davis. I can understand Italian but I didn't listen to the DJ... just enjoyed the music (well, maybe apart from ELP).

In terms of record buying, I find myself drawn to 'world music' (ugh) more and more. Music unencumbered by the weight of rawk tradition, hype or celebrity.

Listening to Radio One is like listening to tongues from a foreign land.

(nope, haven't a notion either, but to be honest, she could be telling me world war three has just kicked off in the back garden, and i'd stay put till the weather forecast...and sorry for bringing down the tone of this high-falutin' thread)

It's interesting that you should feel like that because I've always thought that the main reason that I enjoy holidays in the US so much is that while I'm among strange foreign people doing strange foreign things in a strange foreign land, because they speak a quite good approximation of English I can understand what's going on and work out for myself if something is a bit odd or just different. When I'm in a land where I only understand a smattering of what's being said, I find it hard to get under the skin of the locality.

Maybe it's a British thing: we don't speak Johnny Foreigner Lingo, because we don't have to, and so anything in a different language is immediately exotic and potentially sexy / fascinating / pleasing to the ear.

Also, try allRadio, a 59 pence iPod application which gives you access to a vast array of foreign stations (including FIP). I almost always choose something from the "International" section, and am very disappointed if they speak English.

...but a few friends and I have recently set up a blog Between Dogs & Wolves http://betweendogsandwolves.wordpress.com/ highlighting great radio and podcasts from around the world that can be heard on the internet.

The recommendations above will all be listened to and put up on the site, if that's alright. I might even manage to avoid passing them off as my own discoveries...