Moshe’s got a show on it. A-Frame regularly makes guest appearances on it. If you want to hear local hip hop, it’s basically your only venue for it. Where is it? Appleton, Maine. JT and Joanne Bisson this past March founded Appleton Radio, www.appletonradio.com on your World Wide Web, and there you can find underground hip hop, 24/7, much of it local. "I have enough local stuff to play nothing but for two weeks straight," says JT. Hosted out of his basement, with the help of www.shoutcast.com and a T1 line, Appleton can play host to 10 broadband users and 32 dial-uppers at any given time, who’ll receive a constant and steady stream through their media players. The Bissons are unrelenting supporters of Maine hip hop, sponsoring the Iron Mic this year, helping to push this new A-Frame album, and generally showing their faces at any local hip-hop event — despite their long drive home from Portland. You can find photos and movies on the site from the events they’ve attended and it won’t take you long to get acquainted with the scene if you want to get up to speed fast. Where do they go from here? To get bigger, they’d need to be more professionally hosted, which would mean a loss of flexibility — cutting in live appearances, mixing songs on the fly, and that’s a tough pill for JT and Joanne to swallow, considering it’s what they do for fun. "Being representatives for the scene is really important," says Joanne. "It’s great to be a part of getting people’s music heard." Help them out by taking a listen.

Though it’s been in operation for about a year, the newest studio on the local block is still Realtime Recording, the studio where A-Frame and Mike Clouds recorded Life on a Barstool. Clouds co-owns the joint, actually, along with DJ Coch and Kut Kaper, who helped engineer much of Barstool. Since its inception, Realtime has seen MCs like Tommy Gunz, Bread, and Adverb at the mic and is quickly establishing itself as the place to put together a hip-hop album in Portland. It’s even urban, situated right on Exchange Street in downtown Portland, in the same building as Nomia’s sex-toy shop and Discover, a magazine about Maine history. With high ceilings, a brand-new board and computers, synthesizers on demand, and a great booth full of baffling options that can lend everything from a concert-hall to closet sound, it’s remarkably efficient — has to be for such a small space. The whole operation is no more than 500 square feet or so. It’s perfect for a growing scene, everything a rapper and DJ could want, but not too big to be intimidating or overwhelming. And it’s not just for hip hop. They’ve had metal bands record in there, and as long as you’re not a six-piece who want to all record live they should be able to accommodate you. Plus, they’ve got a really comfortable couch. Realtime Recording is located at 24 Exchange Street, in Portland. Call (207) 332-9997.