RA Podcast

A sonic diary from one of UK experimental music's brightest talents. Loraine James doesn't like to sit still. She first made waves on Hyperdub, where 2019's For You and I and 2021's Reflection reimagined grime, IDM and dub with a mischievous touch. But calling her a club experimentalist has never fit the bill. The London-born artist has collaborated with everyone from Yaeji to TSVI, remixed Kelela and Tirzah, hosts an NTS show steeped in contemporary classical and turns out records at a staggering pace. She also makes some of the most evocative ambient around as Whatever the Weather. What holds it all together is irreverence and intimacy, like tuning into the silly but heartfelt voice notes you might send a new lover. And that energy runs through her RA Mix. It opens in wistful territory with her own Tirzah collaboration, before shifting into the spectral jazz of African-American Sound Recordings. A third of the way in, it moves to the darker corners of her USB, as Aoki Takamasa's glitchy minimal gives way to Burial at his hardest-hitting. From there, things stay weird: deconstructed freestyle rapping, vintage Flying Lotus, post-club trance via Arca and plenty of James's own music. Find the tracklist and Q&A at ra.co/podcast/1081 @lorainejames

A 100 percent production mix from the dubwise don. “You can find inspiration in everything, as insignificant as it seems,” Andy Martin told 15 Questions earlier this year. For the Mexican-Jamaican producer, that stretches from dub to Mexican literature, ancestral knowledge and science fiction, all fed into techno that sounds otherworldly but never forgets the floor. Dub is the skeleton of Martin’s music. Sometimes it’s explicit, as on his collaboration with Lee “Scratch” Perry. Sometimes it’s subtler, as on this year’s “Tierra de Nahuales” for Animalia, where a dub siren and decayed reverb pull proggy, tribal sci-fi techno into dub’s orbit. No wonder he’s a buy-on-sight producer for DJs like Kia, Priori and CCL, and as at home at Berghain and FOLD as at memòri and pe:rsona. Running just over 90 minutes, RA.1061 is an anthology made entirely of his own music. Track titles nod to Juan Rulfo’s Pedro Páramo and Remedios Varo’s painting La creación de las aves, yet the mix is never as cerebral as that suggests. At a time when music is increasingly asked to justify itself in numbers, Martin counters: “Value exists precisely because it cannot be quantified.” Find the tracklist and Q&A at ra.co/podcast/1080 @andy-martin

The Berlin DJ, one of the brightest of her generation, makes a patient case for house and techno on vinyl. We’ve all heard the phrase “DJ’s DJ.” Too often, it’s lazy shorthand for a technical skill so esoteric it’s lost on the dance floor. But Nathalie Ogazón Faber embodies the craft in its fullest sense, commanding respect from the regulars at the booth to the sound technician at the back. Known simply as Ogazón, she played her first gig in 2018 and made her Berghain debut in 2022. Since then she’s become the quintessential Panorama Bar DJ, a resident in spirit alongside ItaloJohnson, Steffi and her regular b2b partner, Ryan Elliott. Her affinity for techno is equally pronounced, and her mixing bridges both floors: patient and refined without ever feeling too polished. That patience defines her RA Mix. Forgoing obvious drops, she builds subtle, drawn-out peaks through delicate shifts like a weightier kick drum or an incoming hi-hat. Melody arrives as a pad here, a dubbed-out chord there. The connecting theme, she says, is emotion. Recorded entirely on vinyl, RA.1060 embraces imperfection. “In a world where everything is becoming increasingly polished and ‘perfect,’” she notes, “I think a little bit of grain and a few pops here and there can only be a good thing.” Ogazón is consistent, but don’t mistake that for regression. It’s what makes her a DJ’s DJ, in the truest sense. Find the Q&A at ra.co/podcast/1079 @ogazon

Cinematic techno from the mysterious Dutch producer. Some of the best techno is both beautiful and austere. On an old Robert Hood or Sandwell District track, the industrial clank of percussion gives way to bursts of melody where you can hear the ghosts singing inside the machines. It's this version of techno that the Dutch producer nthng has been honing since the mid-2010s, from his debut on Lobster Theremin's Mörk to records for Delsin. His take on techno, borrowing from trance, dub and ambient, has always hewed close to the edge of the dance floor, that space where dancers keep their eyes shut and get lost in the shadows. For RA.1059, he delivers an hour from the most visceral and cinematic end of his sound. The opening suite of four of his own tracks is nothing (pun intended) short of breathtaking: sky-searching IDM turns into chromatic techno, followed by a dubstep-referencing vocal track with a rolling break that hits with the weight of a guillotine, before he lets loose a slightly syncopated barnstormer. He never lets the drama and tension slip across the remaining 48 minutes, ending on his own piece of paranoid and skeletal drum & bass. Find the tracklist at ra.co/podcast/1078 @nthngnthng

Kicking off a run of artist-on-artist Exchanges for RA25, the musical multi-hyphenates discuss poetry, religion and their experiences as protectors of oratorical tradition. There's a deep creative current running between music and poetry, and Saul Williams and James Massiah know those waters well. This week’s RA Exchange is the first in a series of intergenerational artist-on-artist conversations we’ll be running to mark our 25th anniversary. In it, Williams—the Grammy-nominated poet, musician, writer and actor—and Massiah—a South London poet and musician—talk about lyricism and what first drew them to the written word. Both grew up in the church: Williams as the son of a Baptist preacher, Massiah in the Seventh-day Adventist church, raised on the King James Bible. They discuss how those upbringings shaped their sense of oratory and morality, and the tension between rejecting institutional religion and still holding on to its aesthetic traditions. They also get into what happens when a poem meets music, and what a dance floor can be beyond entertainment. Williams argues it has always been a training ground: a space for resistance, ceremony and mobilisation, where ideas can spark minds and movements. Massiah, meanwhile, explains how simply wanting to keep partying ended up radicalising him. As he puts it: "Where are we going to party if the bad guys have got all the good party locations?" The conversation was recorded in Amsterdam, where Williams performed with Underground Resistance. His new album, Leap Life, is out now on Big Dada. Listen to the full episode.

A showcase of East Coast club music, old and new, from a new Baltimore star. Baltimore doesn't get the credit it deserves. Maryland's largest city gave the world Baltimore club, a blueprint for much of the East Coast's dance music—Jersey club and Philly club both trace their lineage back to it. The scene is alive and kicking, and Tromac, real name Miles Cowling, is at the heart of it. From Prince George's County, Cowling moved to Baltimore in 2019. In 2022 they launched Break A Leg, a party series and safe space for people to dance their pain away, and they've collaborated with RA cover star Zack Fox, Black Rave Culture and Cortisa Star. "You know how long I been waiting for this. I'm about to make a name for myself," begins RA.1058. From there, Cowling twists through contemporary East Coast club—OSSX, JIALING, JD. Reid, AceMo, DJ Swisha—plus honorary peers Bored Lord, Conducta and Jam City. Across 38 tracks in 66 minutes, it's high-tempo but not for the sake of it: sometimes coasting, sometimes jumping, sometimes letting it all out. About halfway through, a Tucker Carlson sample calls Baltimore one of the most dangerous cities around. Cowling's answer comes straight after, with the voice of CalvoMusic: "There are beautiful things here, don't come down to play the fuck around." Find the tracklist and Q&A at ra.co/podcast/1077 @tromac @breakalegparty @hochiruns @3SIDEmusic

The frontwoman of Grammy-nominated The Internet talks ambition, contentment and her third solo album, Beard. Syd, born Sydney Bennett, is nearly 20 years into a career that started when she was a teenager. She cut her teeth as the in-house engineer and DJ for hip-hop collective Odd Future before forming The Internet, the Grammy-nominated soul group that helped shape a strand of Los Angeles R&B in the 2010s. Two solo albums followed—Fin in 2017 and Broken Hearts Club in 2022—but she describes her third, Beard, which came out this summer, as the first that feels fully her own. She made it in the same period she married her partner and, by her own account, arrived at a version of self-acceptance she'd been circling for a decade. In this Exchange, Syd sits down with RA's Content Production Lead Antonia Odunlami to talk about the album's title, a reference to the facial hair she stopped removing after years of treating it as something to hide. They also discuss letting go of who she was "supposed" to be, why she's stopped chasing the "sleep when you're dead" ambition she was raised on and her plans to get back behind the CDJs after years away. Listen to the full episode.

An hour of ancient and alien sounds from the Catalan composer and PAN favourite. Marina Herlop is at once from the future and from the past. The classically trained Catalan singer's voice opens a door onto an older world—a nymph out of a Romantic painting. Underneath, something deeply alien. "When you're writing a song… there's a moment of expulsion, like a squid spitting," she told <i>Pitchfork</i>. She didn't open a laptop until her third album, learning Ableton from scratch over a fortnight in her father's family home in the Aragon hills. That record, Pripyat, and its follow-up Nekkuja landed on PAN, placing her among the experimental queens like Eartheater and Jenny Hval—with a touch of Björk. Her RA Mix brings those influences to the surface: classical with a whiff of the strange (Holst's Rig Veda hymns, Sakamoto playing Ravel), music for worlds that don't exist (Ragnarok Online, Jujutsu Kaisen, Morricone) and a study in everything a voice can be made into. Barely any is club music. Assembled in Ableton—"I don't have access to a CDJ right now," she says—RA.1057 is a soundtrack for decompression. Asked which club shaped her most, she named one that isn't: El Pumarejo, the Barcelona space where she met the musicians still in her band. Find the Q&A and tracklist at ra.co/podcast/1076 @marinaherlopofficial

The trance DJ on clickbait journalism, commercial success and making a name in the viral age. Marlon Hoffstadt started DJing at 17. By 18, he got his first taste of moderate success, and at 20, it had all disappeared. What followed was several years in the trenches: demos ignored, labels uninterested and a career that seemed to be ending before it even took off. Hoffstadt went back to study journalism and PR, became a dad and continued to make music no one wanted to release. Then, somewhere at the intersection of the post-pandemic landscape and the rise of the TikTok influencer, he re-emerged as DJ Daddy Trance, a hands-in-the-air commercial DJ headlining festivals around the world. This uncanny shift has made him the subject of sharp criticism from some figures in the underground scene where it all started for Hoffstadt. In this RA Exchange, the Berlin native directly addresses his detractors. He also talks about how he's channeled Berlin's underground sensibility into the world of expensive tickets and stadium-scale production; what changed between his throwing no-phone parties in 2019 and dominating a scene that profits from video reels; and his reaction to some of Resident Advisor's recent posts and articles—and what he, as a former PR professional, would have done differently. His new album, Das ist Daddy, is out now on Capitol Records. Listen to the episode in full.

One of the Netherlands' sharpest selectors turns in over two hours of smoke-thick techno and cathartic bass weight. "Genre-defying" has trailed Jasmín Hoek, best known as Jasmín, for years. It isn't wrong—listen to the Dutch-Argentinian artist's mixes and you'll hear anything from Rrose and Blawan to Ricardo Villalobos and DJ Koze. But it misses a better question: what holds it all together? "For every set I play, I think of the colours I want to represent," Hoek explains in her Q&A. For RA.1056, she channels warm, earthy colours; you'll see it running through the tracklist, from "Burning Blood" and "Eruption" to "Chamas E Fumaça." The other constant is percussion over melody. Half Argentinian, Hoek has spoken about her preference for rhythm, and it gives her work a physicality you can almost walk into. It's there from the first minute: Pinch and Shackleton's "Burning Blood," dark and twisted and sprawling. But Hoek is a techno head too, with plenty that wouldn't feel out of place at Berghain: Cari Lekebusch, Rene Wise, Rrose. It's a cliché that the best DJs are dancers first, but Hoek embodies it, having worked at De School and, more recently, programming with Nachtparlement. Last year's Bite The Hand That Feeds You arrived as Hessle Audio's 50th release; this year she lands on fabric Originals. Whatever floor she graces next, she'll arrive with a vision that will take you by the hand, and pull you all the way in. Find the Q&A and tracklist at ra.co/podcast/1075 @Jasminhoek @fabric @hessleaudio

Supersized techno, from the Vault Sessions darling. If you're part of the post-2020 cohort of techno heads, odds are you've heard of Grace Dahl. The Amsterdam native has become ubiquitous the past few years, via her DJing, productions and her label, Serial Disc Touchers. Her techno is energetic, embracing and big without sacrificing complexity or detail. This wasn't overnight, though: born in Hungary to seasoned ravers, Dahl started playing out at 18 and landed a residency at Vault Sessions and regular Berghain appearances soon after. Serial Disc Touchers, Vol. 1, a collaborative EP with Alec Dienarr, moves from ropey tech house to peaktime anthems and after hours acid, held together by her balance of floor functionality and emotional finesse. Dahl brings the same MO to her RA Mix. Starting with a melancholic selection of dubbed-out techno, she waits until the 20-minute mark to get things funky. From there, RA.1055 is all party: bleep techno ready for a carnival, outrageous 303 work and a hint of vintage UK rave, with a tracklist spanning VNTM and Villa to Luke Slater, Underworld and Ian Axide. Big-room techno done right—careful and considerate in selection but ready to blast your boots off. Find the tracklist and Q&A at ra.co/podcast/1074 @gracedahl @vault-sessions-collective

90 minutes of trip-hop and electronica, as the elusive SUED founder walks down memory lane. Everything is cyclical. Stick around long enough and what was new and thrilling, then gauche, comes back around, rediscovered by a generation seeing it with fresh eyes. The trip-hop revival of the 2020s is a neat example. But what does it sound like coming from someone who was there the first time? SW., AKA Stefan Wust, has an answer. The producer co-founded SUED in 2011 with SVN, a label whose hypnotic, stripped-back records arrived untitled and unannounced, and disappeared from Hard Wax just as quietly. For his RA Mix, he reaches back to those formative years, digging through trip-hop, breakbeat and electronica. Famously elusive, he explains in a rare Q&A below that the mix isn't a historical reconstruction but "an attempt to bring that memory back to life through my perspective today." Built from loops, delay and hard cuts, RA.1054 reassembles the music of his youth rather than filing it away. His Reminder series did the same for Detroit and Chicago; this goes somewhere he never has, to the trip-hop and downtempo end of the same decade. An excerpt of Rachmaninov's Liturgy of St John Chrysostom sets church-like choral vocals against decaying electronics from Twine and Gridlock, and of course it wouldn't be trip-hop without Tricky. Find the tracklist and Q&A at ra.co/podcast/1073

The British jungle star reflects on grief, artistic integrity, bass communities and why slowing down has become central to the next phase of her career. In 2019, SHERELLE's life changed when a viral Boiler Room set introduced her high-speed blend of jungle, footwork and hardcore to a global audience. This much we know. So what comes after the storm? In the 2020s, the Londoner has become one of the most recognisable figures in UK dance music: major festival stages, a BBC Radio 6 Music show and even a MOBO award. Yet after putting herself through over 100 shows a year, and turning 30, she began to question the pace of life as a touring DJ. The deaths of two close family members over the past 12 months brought those questions into focus, reshaping how she thinks about DJing, friendship, club culture and what she wants to leave behind. In this Exchange, SHERELLE speaks with RA Editor Gabe Szatan about learning to take pride in her achievements, resisting the pressure to turn music into social media content and giving UK bass artists their flowers while they're still here. She also discusses Hooversound—the label she runs with NAINA—racial and class hierarchies that shape dance music, and Rest & Restoration, her new party built around longer sets, affordable tickets and a simple philosophy to slow down, and make time for the people you love. Listen to the episode in full. @iamsherelle

A New York summertime block party in all of its glory. New York City has had an epic few months. From clinching a milestone NBA Championship title, to Mayor Mamdani rolling out affordable housing and fixing potholes, to World Cup fever, the summer of 2026 has (for the most part) been a rush of elation for residents. Soundtracking it all is Public Service. A free, monthly party run by DJs Toribio and Mickey Perez, this all-ages affair hit record crowds in recent editions ever since launching five years ago. Even if there's no special occasion, the atmosphere is always electric. Multiple dance cyphers form; musicians bring instruments to jam; free pizza is distributed; informal marketplaces emerge in the back. Public Service is a living tapestry of block party culture, serving as a reminder that church-like communal joy doesn't need four walls or a roof. Taking place in Brooklyn parks during the summer and clubs during cold weather, the party has also held editions in Detroit, Miami and Montréal. Sound is powered by hot pink speaker stacks, decorated with flower garlands, courtesy of Karlala Soundsystem whose founder Karl Scholz regularly provides rentals for free or at a sliding scale to cultural organisers. Toribio and Perez man the decks each time, dishing out heaters across Afro house, dembow, cumbia, electro, hip-hop and techno. It might be the city's only DIY party where you can hear Jackmaster, Kendrick Lamar and Willie Colón in a single hour or see kids, aunties and grandfathers in the crowd. RA.1053 is a recording of this year's season opener in May—its vibrant blends and carnival-like mood will likely have more than a few listeners planning trips to experience the magic. Find the tracklist and Q&A at ra.co/podcast/1072 @publicservicenyc @mickeyperez @toribiomusic

The titan of UK bass delivers a head trip through dub's past, present and future, one year on from RA.1000.Time has a way of slipping through the fingers. A year ago, RA.1000 marked the 1,000th release in the RA Mix series. Now, 52 weeks on, we've arrived at RA.1052—and first up is Kevin Richard Martin, AKA The Bug, finally making his long-awaited debut on the series. Ask anyone who's stood within earshot of a soundsystem he's operating: Martin doesn't so much make music as engineer entire weather systems. His music demands total immersion, from the earthquake-like bass weight of anthems like "Skeng" and "Poison Dart" to the post-apocalyptic pull of his slower steppers. As he told RBMA in 2018: "The more music becomes relegated to a cheap accessory, the less people will realise there's great magic in music as a form." For his RA Mix debut, Martin delivers "nocturnal dives into the city with memories of Blade Runner on repeat." A tribute to PRESSURE, his Berlin night, RA.1052 runs through Porter Ricks, Dillinja and Tikiman, charting dub's kaleidoscopic range — from Basic Channel's minimalism to K Wata's sleek bass science. A year ago, RA.1000 looked back on two decades since 2006. RA.1052 picks up the torch and keeps walking. See you here again next year. Find the tracklist and Q&A at ra.co/podcast/1071 @thebugofficial

An antidote to the summertime banger, with an hour of breezy ambient from the Vienna artist. When we picture the summertime banger, we picture high energy. But with record-breaking heatwaves from South Korea to the South of France, a different soundtrack makes sense. Cue RA.1051. Across an hour of woozy lo-fi electronics—many his own productions—Mietze Conte offers the alternative, inspired, as he puts it below, by "the fresh cool cleansing breeze" after a storm. At his most energetic, the Vienna artist appeals to fans of Live From Earth or 1tbsp—eurodance meets hyperpop with a DIY smirk. At his most contemplative, he drifts toward the ambient reverie of Otto Benson and Dylan Henner. What ties it together is playfulness: songs under two minutes, hand-drawn covers, music that's deeply serious and deeply unserious at once. Here he goes wide without raising the temperature, from Green-House to Nala Sinephro to Terekke's dub-hazed loops. Step into his world and find some much-needed shade. Find the tracklist and Q&A at ra.co/podcast/1070 @mietzeconte

The British sibling duo talk creative process, stepping away from successful solo projects and their new album, Pure Devotion, on XL Recordings. Tom and Ed Russell are brothers who spent the first decade of their careers working separately, building solo careers with real underground momentum. As Truss, Tom made techno on labels like Perc Trax and R&S. As Tessela, Ed put out jungle and breaks on Poly Kicks and his own label, All Caps. Both walked away from them after a week in a Welsh cottage in 2015, when they wrote the material that would form the foundations of Overmono—today, one of the most popular projects in dance music today. What binds them now is a set of self-imposed rules, designed to produce interesting accidents out of the studio. On their new record, Pure Devotion, that meant engineering genuinely out-of-the-box experiments: baking a crash cymbal in the oven overnight to see how would change with heat; running tape past magnets to erase half of what they were recording as they recorded it; and writing 84 versions of one album track, "Knights in Shining Prada," before settling on one that would make the cut. The brothers write obsessively in studios, hotels, airplanes and tour buses, a shared instinct honed to the point that they rarely disagree during the production process. In this Exchange, RA Editor Gabe Szatan sat down with Tom and Ed to reflect on some of their more surprising musical inspirations, letting go of other people's opinions and summoning the courage to walk away from two solo careers that were arguably at their peak. Pure Devotion is out August 7th on XL Recordings. Listen to the episode in full.

The Príncipe all stars transmit the future sound of batida, live from Waking Life. In theory, a supergroup should be a carefree yet thrilling assembly of well-known talents, bound to multiply each other's creative output. But in practice, bringing out the best in every artist on stage, especially for electronic musicians, most of whom are used to working solo, is not an exact science. O Ghettão—the powerhouse trio of DJ Niggafox, DJ Danifox and Firmeza, all associated with Lisbon's Príncipe record label—however, prove it can live up to it's promise. Armed with a handful of small drum machines, hand-sized controllers, and laptops packed with drum kits, the three are one the most exhilarating live acts in the underground. About 20 minutes into RA.1050, amid an intoxicating polyrhythmic hoodoo, a commanding voice sneaks in the repeated phrase in over wistful, semba-laced chords. "Each one dances as they like," claims the MC in Portuguese, and few phrases could be more evocative of the O Ghettão sound. The wonder team came together at the latest Waking Life in Portugal and recorded another woozy, freeform live PA—a gargantuan patchwork ranging from outlandish batida to slapping acid house. RA.1050 is also an indisputable sign of how vivid the batida scene, one they all forged, has truly become. Príncipe Records, founded in 2011, has spurred the birth of artists and imprints, like Nídia and Tia Maria Produções, while also fueling a new, welcoming spirit in Lisbon's nightlife, from Rua Rosa to clubs like Lux Frágil. Following a path paved by acts such as Underground Resistance, O Ghettão can indeed be tagged as an electronic music group. More than that, however, they're an impressive showcase of the intense renewal of sonic palettes crossed by Afro-diasporic idioms on the dance floor. Read more at ra.co/podcast/1069

The long-anonymous Peak Oil favourite breaks cover with two hours that run from post-punk and dub to vintage New York house. Mystery is a powerful force. What stays unknown stays enticing—negative space the listener fills in for themselves. Minimalists may be its largest constituency, and few have held the line as long as Topdown Dialectic. That changed with False LP A, which finally named him: Izaak Schlossman, a San Francisco photographer who spent years issuing untitled, identically timed tracks with no narrative attached. Coming out of the shadows hasn't cost the music its haze. Working in the Basic Channel lineage, Schlossman lays tracing paper over house and dub techno and pulls through the faintest outline—a bassline's shadow, the memory of a chord. Tracks surface the way bodies emerge in a steam room. He belongs to a North American underground that's been among dance music's most progressive forces this past decade—no surprise, then, that he credits Scott Zacharias of Detroit's No Way Back in the Q&A. This isn't quite the end of the mystery. Only the second Topdown Dialectic mix to surface, RA.1049 wipes the condensation from the glass just long enough for a look inside: it opens with a cut from German label Workshop before drifting from atmospheric post-punk and dubbed-out house into cosmic electro and, by the close, vintage New York house. It moves at an unhurried, chugging pace, but never mistakes restraint for stasis—each track quietly recalibrating until another contour comes into view. Find the tracklist and Q&A at ra.co/podcast/1068 @peakoil @falsearalia @aught0101

A masterclass in the art of the all-nighter, as one of France's finest purveyors of funk delivers six hours live from Robert Johnson. What does minimal sound like in 2026? Ask five DJs and you'll get five answers, from the acidic electro and techno of Montevideo to the dubby loops of Montreal. A real contender for the face of contemporary minimal, though, is Romain Poncet, AKA Traumer. Poncet is, in many ways, old school. As a DJ, he offers a French twist on Rominimal: long, drawn-out loops mixed with imperceptible precision. In the studio, he turns out the kind of records you'd find in Raresh's bag. He didn't start out a minimal head, though. His early-'10s releases were driving techno and tech house, but around 2016 the Parisian changed tack, launching GET TRAUM — a label steeped in both Bucharest's ar:pia:r and France's own history of deep, stripped-back house. Whatever the genre, his music is understated, never showy: DJ tools in the truest sense, designed for dancers and for DJs who want to tell a story over a long set. Case in point is RA.1048, a six-hour recording from Robert Johnson. The drums skip like kids let out for summer; the melodies sit between euphoria and melancholy. Swallow it whole or savour it course by course — RA.1048 is a Traumer tasting menu. Read more at ra.co/podcast/1067 @traumer