RA Podcast

To an international audience, NIKS might be best known as one of the cofounders of Black Artist Database, but she's also an incredible DJ. And public speaker. Over the past few years, through a mix of activism, thought and DJing, the London selector has created an all-encompassing approach to her artistry that centers dance music, social justice and an endless desire to uplift those around her, especially Black artists. Through Black Artist Database, NIKS has created a resource to support Black artists from around the world. What started as a spreadsheet called Black Bandcamp has become a fully-fledged platform with editorial, mixes and, of course, the powerful directory of artists that started it all to begin with. Outside of that, NIKS curates panels, hosts and gives talks and DJs. Her RA Podcast is inspired by a specific night she played in Manchester, but it's also a wonderful snapshot of her style, connecting the dots between Drexciya and Octave One, Nicola Cruz and Seth Troxler, Lyric Hood and James Bangura, and an electrifying section that weaves between tracks from X-Coast and X-Press 2. It's as thoughtful and intentional as everything else she does, an hour-and-a-half in the world of one of London's brightest stars. Read more: http://ra.co/podcast/827 @niksbad

Physical Therapy has as many vibes as he does aliases. You never really know what you're going to get from his sets—you can probably count on a bit of UK garage and some breakbeats, but beyond that, it's a free-for-all. He's gone through phases ranging from DIY pop edits to grayscale Berlin techno to all the fantastic and unpredictable music on his label Allergy Season to his latest EP of vocal-heavy 2-step tracks, part of a recent move towards more emotional dance music that he says captures his "twee" side. If there's anyone that truly believes in the power of crying on the dance floor, it's him. He's an expert at themed mixes, pulling together loosely categorized sections of his vast and sometimes hilarious collection. (Other sets, like his revered Honcho Campout recording, are gloriously all over the place.) But for his RA Podcast he's gone straight for the dance floor, choosing the kind of thing he would play at a club rather than one of his NTS sets. It's typically era-spanning and adventurous, yet woven together with an expert touch, running from an underrated Texas dubstep label (Pushing Red) to old-school IDM to vintage Miss Kittin and even an obscure (or just forgotten) turn-of-the-millennium cover of "How Soon Is Now" that would only really sound right in his hands. Read more: http://ra.co/podcast/826 @physical-therapy

The first weekend of February was a big one for Ahad Elley, AKA Ahadadream. On the Friday, he was featured in Vogue India alongside other South Asian artists and crews currently lighting up UK dance music. 24 hours later, he launched a residency at London club Colour Factory, playing to a packed crowd who, during a brief power cut, chanted his name like adoring teenagers. To outsiders, this might feel like a story of overnight success, but Elley has been grafting away for years: DJing, producing, running a label (More Time), throwing parties (No ID) and, perhaps most importantly of all, co-founding the first edition of London festival Dialled In, which launched last September. As well as showcasing a wealth of South Asian talent, the event fostered a new community of ravers who, in Elley's words, "felt seen in a club space for the first time." When he was younger, Elley shied away from centering his Pakistani heritage in his music. Today, it's a huge part of his identity, from the events he runs and the music he makes to the tunes he plays. But, as <i>RA</i> 825 shows, his DJ sets also go way beyond South Asia and London, spanning gqom, Egyptian percussion, Portuguese Afro house and classic Peverelist. This is Elley at peak time, the kind of thing you might hear at his next Colour Factory gig. "The idea was just to include tracks that bring me joy and make me move," he said. "I hope they do the same for you." Read more: http://ra.co/podcast/825 @ahadadream

Nicolá Cruz is a master of meaningful engagement. Whether he's studying North African melodies or spiritual chants, he shows profound respect for a given sound's cultural context. This is evident across his entire discography. His earliest releases on Multi Culti and ZZK Records layerered traditional woodwinds and percussion with folktronica and tribal house, reflecting a holistic understanding of global rhythms. His more recent work takes an adventurous, polyglot approach to club music, with EPs on Highlife, Rhythm Section and Tra Tra Trax exploring breaks, acid and other spirally sounds. But even his deep, drum-heavy techno cuts feel unusually organic, vibrant polyrhythms bursting with character. For his RA Podcast, the Ecuador-based producer shows off his rave education. This display of futuristic chuggers and electro—Marcela Dias Sindaco's "A Flor Da Pele" is a particular highlight—speaks to Cruz's deep appreciation for body music. He treats dance floor jams with the same nuance as culturally significant sounds, a testament to his versatility, knowledge and experience. Journeying across acid basslines and dubby electronics, the 73 minute-long ride flirts with psychedelia, distortion and experimental bleeps, with many of the selections reflecting his own taste for colorful patterns. It's energetic and warm, flush with life, until the very end. Read more: http://ra.co/podcast/824 @nicolacruz

Chris Clark's music is hard to describe, but if you wanted to explain it to an electronic music fan, you might use the dreaded term "IDM" to encompass the many strange and alluring records, some frantic, some chill, the UK producer has put out through Warp over the years. We can be a bit more specific: he uses field recordings, out-there drum patterns and all kinds of hardware (seriously, there's a lot) to make make meticulously processed music, some of which you can dance to. Lately, though, he's turned his attention to classical music, scoring films and televisions shows and culminating in last year's Playground In A Lake for vaunted label Deutsche Grammophon, which featured guests like AFRODEUTSCHE and Oliver Coates and a member of Grizzly bear on a moving, string and horns-led suite about climate change. You hear all these ideas at once on Clark's stirring RA Podcast, which features music, as he explains, from 1922 all the way to 2022. Classical rubs elbows with Burial and Ricardo Villalobos, as once familiar tracks melt into new (mis)shapes. It also features plenty of Clark originals—maybe some glimpsse of the new album? The best part isn't even the formidable selections, but the way he puts it altogether. Far from a seamless DJ mix, this one is full of peaks and valleys and clever transitions that'll make you check the tracklist and wonder what you just heard. It's the kind of all-over-the-place mix that captures the brilliance of Clark's in a DJ format. Maybe he should do this more often. Read more: https://ra.co/podcast/823

GiGi FM is a trained dancer, which gives her a deeper insight into the intrinsic relationship between music and bodily movement. You can read a lot more about her philosophy and approach in the interview below, but you don't even need to know about it to hear this in her RA Podcast—a collection of swirling deep techno that rivals anything made by the usual cohort of "hypnotic" techno heads. Looking at the tracklist doesn't really do it justice, but the names involved give you an idea of what to expect: Varuna, ASC, Donato Dozzy, The Orb, Sunju Hargun. This is techno that ripples rather than bludgeons, that moves with an ethereal grace, where tracks bleed into one another beautifully, with a few surprises, too. While you're here, you should check out her Magnetite EP for Bambounou's label Bambe, already one of the young year's most bewitching techno records. But if this is your introduction, then turn off the lights, light a candle or some palo santo, and sink into two hours of your new favorite techno DJ. Read more: http://ra.co/podcast/822 @ gigi-fm

Southeast Asia is made up of diverse dance music markets that feel strongest when united. A steady stream of cross-border collaborations has come to define the region's underground nightlife, with Bangkok-based Sunju Hargun at the forefront of many of these exchanges. Over the years, he's honed a signature sound of minimal techno, tribal rhythms and deep downtempo while playing in Singapore, Indonesia and Vietnam. Inspired by the traditional music of these countries, his DJ sets and productions are lush tonal sound baths, with plenty of nature references. Shimmering ambient evokes misty mountain tops while whiffs of Goa trance nod to beach sunrises. His current project, Siamese Twins Records, is also rooted in pan-Asian connections. A platform to explore old-world chants and ceremonial percussion, the label hosts much of Hargun's own work, including Bollywood-inspired acid made as Mogambo, a production outfit he runs with Jerom Doudet. All these myriad styles are present on Hargun's RA Podcast, an hour-long trip where flickering synths reverberate like gongs before morphing into an amorphous mass of dub techno, jungle noises and meandering modular sequences. Read more: http://ra.co/podcast/821

If gqom has a CEO, it's probably DJ Lag. The South African artist has found enormous success since teaching himself to produce and DJ as a teenager in Durban, to the point that he famously worked with Beyoncé on the Lion King soundtrack. His style of gqom, a heaving, powerful type of club music, has become sleek and often catchy, growing from classic tracks like "Ice Drop" into thrilling hybrids like "Lucifer," his collaboration with amapiano artist Lady Du. Like so much dance music around the world at this point, DJ Lag's newest productions are informed by the red-hot, ultra-suave sound of amapiano, another South African-born genre. His long-awaited debut album, Meeting With The King, features plenty of flirtations with amapiano and house styles, working with some of South Africa's most talented artists and coming up with a sound he's christened Gqom 2.0. You can hear DJ Lag's expansive, exciting vision in his RA Podcast, an hour of cutting-edge South African dance music that lays out some of the sounds (and artists) you'll be hearing all year, from amapiano to Afrotech and Afro house and many intriguing things in between. Read more including an interview with DJ Lag: https://ra.co/podcast/820

Over three hours of ambient and rolling rhythms from a master of minimal. Since his early days as a resident at the legendary Montreal afterhours club Stereo, Maher Daniel has been a stalwart in the world of minimal-leaning house music. It was there that he learned and mastered the foundations of his style: deep melodies, rolling beats, extended mixes, all put together with a wash of psychedelia. Following a move to Barcelona, the Palestinian-Canadian DJ more firmly struck out on his own, appearing on Lee Burridge's world-conquering All Day I Dream label before starting his own, The Other Side, in 2016. The Other Side has become an important outpost for a kind of dance music that blends old-school microhouse sensibilities with the rolling basslines and three-dimensional sound design of Rominimal, notably through a series of collaborations with Ricardo Villalobos with the <a href=/reviews/24551><i>Changes</i></a> EP trilogy. During the pandemic, Daniel also started dipping his toes into ambient music, which starts off this epic, three-hour-plus mix before it plunges into rolling rhythms. He takes the time to stretch out here, mixing plenty of his own work with tracks from Jesper Dahlbäck, Cristi Cons, Dexter and, of course, Ricardo Villalobos, ending with a stunning custom breakbeat edit of Global Communication's ambient techno epic "14:31."

Flava D brings us into her world of garage, bassline, grime and, now, drum & bass. Read more: https://ra.co/podcast/818 @flava_d

Late-night murmurs and coldwave rhythms from a one-of-a-kind DJ. Read more: http://ra.co/podcast/817 @okodj

A sunny live recording of the Peckham DJ in Melbourne. Read more: http://ra.co/podcast/816 @bradleyzero

Read more: https://ra.co/podcast/815 @sky_h1

Eclectic, global club selections from one of Rinse FM's most beloved DJs. Read more: http://ra.co/podcast/814 @jyotysingh

Warehouse music. Read more: http://ra.co/podcast/813 @melladeemusic

Old-school house from a UK standard-bearer. Read more: https://ra.co/podcast/812 @chesus-aka-earl-jeffers

Read more: https://ra.co/podcast/811 @sound-metaphors

Ballroom club music from one of the genre's most important artists. Read more: http://ra.co/podcast/810 @djmikeq

Breathtaking club music with a cinematic twist. Read more: http://ra.co/podcast/809 @CORINMUSIC

Our 808th podcast comes from one of the most exciting and inspiring names in techno. Read more: https://ra.co/podcast/808 @chippynonstop

A three-hour journey—and we mean journey—through downtempo, disco and techno. Read more: http://ra.co/podcast/807 @fortromeau

Dense and dizzy neon techno from a Georgian artist on the rise. Read more; http://ra.co/podcast/806 @salome-664218599

Autumnal ambient from a master downtempo DJ. Read more: http://ra.co/podcast/805 @grandriver

The world at 118 BPM. Read more: http://ra.co/podcast/804 @0riana

Forward-thinking techno played by a master of the CDJs. Read more: http://ra.co/podcast/803 @julianahuxtable

100 percent amapiano. Read more: http://ra.co/podcast/802 @caltonic-sa

Broken techno and eclectic beats from the DJ formerly known as TSASHA. Read more: http://ra.co/podcast/801 @laeloblack

On our 800th RA Podcast, New Jersey's club queen spreads the East Coast club gospel. Read more: https://ra.co/podcast/800 @UNiiQU3

Groovy house and techno from one of the most influential women in dance music. Read more: https://ra.co/podcast/799 @djminx

A murky ride through dystopian techno and hard dance from a new kid on the block. Read more: http://ra.co/podcast/798 @wantonwitch

Club bangers of all stripes. Read more: https://ra.co/podcast/797 @ djpitchdj

@ dj-darryn @tonebnimble

A moody dance floor mix from the A Colourful Storm founder. https://ra.co/podcast/795 @moopie

Old-school house from Los Angeles. https://ra.co/podcast/794 @mezmonty

Epic Afro house. Read more: https://ra.co/podcast/793 @djkittyamor

A festival-ready mix from the femme culture boss. Read more: https://ra.co/podcast/792 @elkka

A nearly three-hour tour de force of drum & bass and dubstep. Read more: https://ra.co/podcast/791 @quartz

130 to 170 BPM in 60 minutes. Read more: https://ra.co/podcast/790 @cici-cavanagh

Tuareg electronic music. Read more: https://ra.co/podcast/789 @mdoumoctar

Spellbinding percussive twists and turns. Read more: https://ra.co/podcast/788 @ehuamusic

Cutting-edge Afro house out of London. Read more: https://ra.co/podcast/787 @dj-ic

Read more: https://ra.co/podcast/786 @marron-official

Self-proclaimed badass dance music from Vladislav Delay. Read more: https://ra.co/podcast/785 @vladislavdelay

Feel-good chunkers. Read more: https://ra.co/podcast/784 @sallycberlin

Intricate and trippy techno from a pillar of the American underground. Read more: https://ra.co/podcast/783 @experimental-housewife

An all-vinyl session from one of the UK's most exciting DJs. Read more: ra.co/podcast/782 @jossymitsu

Introspective beats from the Chinese-German artist. Read more: https://ra.co/podcast/781 @samgoku

Leftfield London techno. Read more: https://ra.co/podcast/780 @alexis_andrews

The crucial UK DJ looks to the influence of South Africa. Read more: https://ra.co/podcast/779 RA Podcast: @SCRATCHADVA

Cutting-edge club sounds from Latin America and beyond. Read more: https://ra.co/podcast/778 RA Podcast: @dengue