Yellow Brit Road

Show Description

Yellow Brit Road won the CRABO award for Best in “Music: Alternative or Similar” at the National Campus/Community Radio Association Conference in Calgary in June 2023. Her submission was titled “Yellow Brit Road: an alternative journey exploring music and shattering expectations”.

About the show: Yellow Brit Road is a show for British and Irish music, and beyond! We cover new artists and releases, music festivals, classic albums and moments in music and pop culture history. From grime to Glastonbury, and poets to punk rock, from U2 to unsigned bands, and Belfast to Brighton, we’ve got it all!

Occasionally, the Yellow Brit Road leads to destinations unexpected, like deep dives into Kingston’s music scene, Lancashire poetry from the 1800s, the history of modern British and Irish hip hop, or even the underground Welsh DIY scene of the 80s. Sometimes, guests walk down the Yellow Brit Road too. Of late, we’ve had Belfast political post punk firebrands Enola Gay, Toronto indie rock musician and co-founder of Music Declares Emergency Canada Brighid Fry from Housewife, pan-European disco rock n rollers The Gulps, Welsh alt rock icons Super Furry Animals frontman Gruff Rhys, amongst others!

Tune in each week to take a further dive into the new, unknown, and exceptionally appealing with me, your host Rue.

About the Host: Aarushi Mathur, or ‘Rue’ on the radio, is a fourth-year Queen’s University student who has hosted Yellow Brit Road for three years. She continued her programming during the pandemic while at home in Mumbai, India submitting content across oceans every single week. Aarushi has been an active contributor on so many other past and present programs as well including What the Punk?!, Indie Wake Up Call, This Just In, the CFRC Live Sessions and more!

From Aarushi: Old and New music I’ve Been Listening to of Late:

Depeche Mode fever has gripped our entire station with their new album Memento Mori being released recently, so I’ve been digging back through the CFRC library to find old vinyl they sent us back in the 80s! I’ve been listening to their 1990 album Violator, and the album still holds up. Depeche Mode are the only band that can poignantly pull off rhymezone dot net-style rhymes in introspective lyrics, and the music is still as funky, dancey and fresh as when it first came out.

A new artist I can’t stop listening to is Heartworms. She and her band are releasing really interesting dark, layered, fascinating goth- and synth-flavoured punk music in the UK, and all the magazines are calling them the next great cult band. Their debut EP A Comforting Notion shows why!

I’m also digging a new band called The Gulps, who have a headline-worthy backstory: two boys from Italy move to London to become rockstars, join the music community and host an audition to recruit bandmates. A fight breaks out in the middle of the audition jam, and the band is formed by members from across Europe who got arrested together in the chaos. Their next move? Pestering Creation Records’ Alan McGee (who signed Oasis) into becoming their manager, successfully (update: they’ve been on the show and were a delight to speak with).