WTJU DJ Corrigan Blanchfield remembers quite well his first time on air. He sat in on a daytime show at the station with Zak Krone (also the drummer for Philadelphia/Charlottesville band Left & Right), and chose to play “Pointsettia” by electronic pop band Mwahaha.
Corrigan Blanchfield (he’s the one in the middle)
“Beware of darkness but avoid too much sun/ The woods will be dark where we’re going there/ And the valleys will rise up and fuck the mountains/ And the discos all burned down because the DayGlo ran out,” the song goes. It’s not 100% FCC-compliant (“fuck”), and it’s a song that would normally cost the station a fine. But “I don’t think that Krone, or anyone listening, noticed,” Blanchfield says.
Perhaps they missed the renegade word as the singer’s raspy, throaty voice is nearly drowned out by layers of synthesizer beats. Perhaps they were too caught up in the song’s aura to notice.
As a U.Va. undergraduate, Blanchfield was known around Grounds as “that guy who’s really into music.” His friends and friends’ friends admired his taste, and while still a student, he landed a coveted (and rare) spot as a DJ in WTJU’s rock department. He also helped establish WXTJ, U.Va.’s student-run radio station, a couple of years ago.
On their weekly WTJU show, World Wide Weirdo, which airs Mondays from 11 p.m. to 1 a.m., Blanchfield and his radio partner, DJ Cocobunny, play a lot of hip-hop mixed with ambient and noise music, indie rock and dreampop. “We’re also both big on Soundcloud and try to plumb its depths to play as much as possible from these random folks we find,” Blanchfield says. True to his reputation around Grounds, Blanchfield is always consuming music: he listens at work via headphones, but his favorite place to get into tunes is in the car, specifically on 29 South at night and on 53 East during the day. He also shops for wax at Steady Sounds record shop in Richmond. “Otherwise, I just keep my ear to the streets and go to the Tea Bazaar a lot,” he says. It’s a great place to discover new acts on the brink of indie rock stardom.
His playlist is a compilation of what he says is “the hottest stuff” he’s found in the last few months, lots of hip-hop and ambient electronic pop music.
Cville Niche 
Posted on August 20, 2015 by Erin O'Hare
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