The human hand
A companion piece to the manifesto — on curation in an algorithmic age.
There's a difference between being played a song and being served a song. The first is someone else's choice, offered. The second is a system's choice, delivered.
When everything gets served, a lot of things stop happening. You stop hearing things you'd never have searched for. You stop trusting other people's taste. You stop noticing the difference between a DJ and a feed.
Radio — good radio — is someone spending hours on a Saturday going through tracks so that on Monday you hear the five they couldn't stop thinking about. That work is invisible if it's working. You don't feel curated; you feel like you just happened to hear a great run of songs.
Club Carter Radio is that work, on purpose, with the work made visible. The tagline is literal. A human hand went into every track ordering. It's slower than an algorithm, it covers less ground, it's less efficient, and that's the whole point.