For our RA2122 series, we've been focusing on dyed-in-the-wool DJs paying tribute to the places that were most important to them. But what if you're an electronic music superstar and you didn't necessarily get your musical education in a club? That's how we come to Marie Davidson, a Canadian artist who counts among the world's most engaging and electrifying live performers, mixing techno with electroclash and post-punk for a sound that feels familiar but totally new at the same time. In 2019, sh...
Nov 07, 2022•1 hr 32 min
As part of RA2122, our ongoing celebration of 21 years of club culture, we'll be featuring some of our favourite DJs from around the world, highlighting the parties or clubs most important to their lives in dance music. Chris Clayton, AKA Karizma, takes DJing seriously. But he also knows that it's about having fun, or at least helping other people to have fun. This is the formula that makes him such a fantastic DJ, and one of the most technically skilled around (he uses CDJs like few others can)...
Oct 31, 2022•59 min
As part of RA2122, our ongoing celebration of 21 years of club culture, we'll be featuring some of our favourite DJs from around the world, highlighting the parties or clubs most important to their lives in dance music. The first time we featured DJ Nobu on the RA Podcast, over ten years ago, we called him "one of Japan's best DJs." In hindsight, i think we can all agree that the country qualifier is no longer necessary: he's one of the world's best DJs, bar none. An absolute master at curating ...
Oct 24, 2022•1 hr 6 min
As part of RA2122, our ongoing celebration of 21 years of club culture, we'll be featuring some of our favourite DJs from around the world, highlighting the parties or clubs most important to their lives in dance music. It's safe to say that there would be no house music, and no dance music as we know it, without François Kevorkian. The French-born, New York-based DJ started remixing disco records in the late-'70s when he was in his early 20s and became a pioneer of the form alongside names like...
Oct 17, 2022•4 hr 12 min
As part of RA2122, our ongoing celebration of 21 years of club culture, we'll be featuring some of our favourite DJs from around the world, highlighting the parties or clubs most important to their lives in dance music. First up we have Tama Sumo and Lakuti, both residents at Berlin's Panorama Bar, the house-focused room upstairs at Berghain. Panorama Bar has played host to thousands—if not millions—of people's most formative dance floor experiences, with an unparalleled vibe, near-perfect sound...
Oct 10, 2022•1 hr 34 min
This week's RA Podcast marks something of a debut for Infinity Division, the new solo project from Canadian artist Ash Luk, best known as one half of EBM-techno duo Minimal Violence. (Minimal Violence had itself been a solo project since last year, when cofounder Lida P left the group.) Getting his start in Vancouver's punk scene as part of the band Lié, Luk's approach to dance music is informed not only by those origins but by Western Canada's long history with industrial music and techno (spot...
Oct 03, 2022•1 hr 22 min
For some dance music fans, Hamish & Toby may be their new favourite DJs thanks to a recent US tour and excellent sets at festivals like Glastonbury, Dimensions, Houghton and Freerotation. 2022 was, after all, a breakthrough year for the UK duo. But in their own, close-knit world of Discogs fanatics and vinyl purists, Hamish Cole and Toby Wareham are admired and established names. They met while studying in Leeds, bonding over a shared love of wiggly bombs at countless clubs and hazy afterpar...
Sep 26, 2022•3 hr 58 min
Whether you're hearing a track or a DJ set, you can usually tell it's Nene H pretty quickly. In just a few years, Beste Aydin has developed a very specific approach within the realm of techno. She inhabits the genre yet colours just enough outside the lines without losing the plot—or the pull—entirely. The focus is on fun, on groove and on hooks, with sets that dip into trance, electro, ghetto house and even hints of hyperpop, tying in neon threads into techno's all-black garb. She's used techno...
Sep 19, 2022•1 hr 4 min
Depending on who you ask, Yousuke Yukimatsu is the best DJ in the world. Or at least in Japan. The eccentric Osaka-born, Tokyo-based DJ has built up an arsenal of fans and disciples—most famously Tzusing—who revere his cross-genre approach and knack for out-of-this-world blends. Case in point: he recently released a mostly ambient mixtape that somehow felt more gripping and propulsive than many techno DJ sets. He also used that release, Midnight Is Comin, to highlight Japan's underrepresented ex...
Sep 12, 2022•2 hr
If you haven't heard of Nikki Nair at this point, we'd invite you to come out from under that rock you're living in. But jokes aside, the last 12 months have been the Atlanta producer's year. He's toured seemingly endlessly, has found his way into a number of local scenes and has put out records for labels like Dirtybird, Lobster Theremin and Scuffed Recordings. If that weren't enough, he's also been putting out an illuminating series of monthly singles on his Bandcamp that show off both his res...
Sep 05, 2022•2 hr 11 min
As anyone who's been to a Nordic country in the summer will tell you, there's a certain magic in the temperate air that you only get from a place that is cold and dark for most of the rest of the year. That probably goes some way towards explaining how a country like Sweden produces some of the sunniest music around, whether we're talking about pop or underground dance. Since she debuted on Stockholm label Studio Barnhus in 2018, Bella Boo has been at the forefront of this sound, making clever, ...
Aug 29, 2022•1 hr 44 min
"You can't take a sound and exclude the people who created it and say, this is our sound," DJ Noir said in our 2020 feature about Juke Bounce Werk, the label she-cofounded. "No, it's either Chicago footwork or it's other." Back then, the Los Angeles-based imprint and crew was still primarily focused around footwork, but Noir and co—including artists like Kush Jones, DJ SWISHA, Surly and Sonic D—have branched out into all sorts of uptempo sounds, touching on house, UK garage, jungle and funk, but...
Aug 22, 2022•1 hr 1 min
Nadia Struiwigh immediately turned heads with her debut album, Lenticular, on CPU Records. It wasn't her first record, but it was an auspicious release at an auspicious time for a label that was at the centre of a revival of early '90s IDM and electro styles. You could use those terms to describe Dutch producer Struiwigh's music, but you'd have to also mention ambient—just check out her last album, Pax Aurora, for Rotterdam powerhouse Nous'klaer Audio—and techno, which is the subject of her new ...
Aug 15, 2022•2 hr 14 min
eviewing their 2021 EP on Livity Sound, RA's Henry Ivry said that the duo—along with collaborator DJ Polo—represented a "micro-history of jungle, garage, dubstep and, of course, their bread-and-butter, UK funky." Now, you might not be familiar with them, but these two London producers, LR Groove and Razzler Man, have been doing their thing in the UK capital for nearly two decades, both together and apart. They reunited in 2018, inspired by the changing and cyclical tastes of UK dance music fans ...
Aug 08, 2022•1 hr 31 min
If we were to pick one word to describe Ziggy Devriendt, AKA Nosedrip, it would probably humble. He runs a one-man empire out of the modest Belgian coastal town of Ostend, and his STROOM label is one of the most quietly brilliant outfits in Western Europe. A mixture of obscurer-than-obscure reissues and quirky new material makes for a label as unpredictable as it is essential, and Devriendt's unusual touch is all over it—he prefers to make up his own compilations and sequences instead of just re...
Aug 01, 2022•3 hr
Imagine growing up near Berlin, getting into dance music, going to Berghain for the first time and getting your mind blown by techno. Then, ten years later, you become a resident DJ at the fabled club. Not many people—any people?—can claim this story, but for Fadi Mohem, what would be so many DJs' dreams became a reality. After getting his 2017 debut 12-inch Reckless in the hands of all the right people in Berlin, Mohem established a bold, bouncy techno sound with releases on Modeselektor's Seil...
Jul 25, 2022•1 hr 28 min
Welsh artist Kelly Lee Owens has a special grasp on techno. She can make it sound wild and naturalistic, like wind blowing through a dense forest, or make it feel cold and sleek, like a gleaming slab of chrome. Either way, though, it's always full of emotion, thanks to the intricate textures and distinctive tones of her voice. You might even say she takes a singer-songwriter approach to techno, but that doesn't mean her music isn't suited for the dance floor. Her most recent album, LP.8 , marks ...
Jul 18, 2022•59 min
Camila Milieme has been playing techno long enough to experience a few of its boom-and-bust cycles. Starting off in Brazil in the late '90s with the kind of rippling, tooly techno you'd expect from that era, Milieme lost interest once things started going minimal and took a break from techno to take up studying instead. By the time she checked back in, the genre had taken a turn closer to the stuff she used to play, so she packed up her bags and moved to Berlin, where she's become an indispensab...
Jul 11, 2022•1 hr
"Working my ass off, to be honest," is how Eli Escobar starts our interview below. That basically sums up his vibe. The New Yorker might not have the same household name status of other DJs who have been soundtracking Manhattan clubs since the early '90s, but he certainly deserves it. Any New York resident worth their salt should have him near the top of the list of their favorite local DJs. He plays anywhere and everywhere in the city, and he can play pretty much anything he wants to, as his RA...
Jul 04, 2022•1 hr 52 min
Last year, New Jersey group OSSX wowed us with a mix of completely original material that blended infectious edits of Janet Jackson and September with tracks like "Split Wig"—one of last year's indisputable breakbeat anthems—that showed how the then-duo could bring together generations of American dance music into one compelling, vibrant mix that celebrates all shades of East Coast club. Their RA Podcast might not be an all-originals mix, but it shares the same spirit. OSSX—now a trio, with Juke...
Jun 27, 2022•1 hr 6 min
Spend enough time at (or listening to) The Lot Radio, and chances are all you'll find Gabrielle Kwarteng. Even though she lives in Berlin now, the American DJ wears New York on her sleeve, repping for the station that helped make her name (she won a Mixcloud award for "Best Eclectic Show" pretty early on). Sure, you could call her sound eclectic—she jumps from house to Afrobeat to Jersey club and beyond—but it seems like "intuitive" might be a better word. She has the taste of someone raised by ...
Jun 20, 2022•1 hr 6 min
We probably don't need to tell you who Deadbeat is. (He even did a previous RA Podcast for us, all the way back in 2007.) But if you need a refresher, he's one of the most important and revered artists in dub techno. The Canadian artist came up in the Montreal scene alongside other trailblazers like Akufen and other Canadians (think Cobblestone Jazz, Mathew Jonson, Wagon Repair, etc). His early records for ~scape are some of the most classic and influential minimal there ever was, but dub is alw...
Jun 13, 2022•2 hr 45 min
Marco Weibel is the epitome of modesty. Over the past decade, the New York artist has quietly amassed a loyal following through expansive DJ sets that touch on everything from spiritual jazz to disco, but rather than credit himself, he lets the tunes speak for themselves. This humble attitude has won him the respect of veterans such as Lefto, as well as a growing fanbase from all corners of the musical spectrum. When he's not DJing, Weibel curates nights at various New York venues and co-runs Da...
Jun 06, 2022•1 hr 36 min
Emerald is a name that should be familiar to any Rinse FM devotee—she's been DJing on the UK dance music radio giant since 2014, and has just started a new flagship slot called The Dance Show on Friday nights. The Londoner is a consummate radio DJ, blending together genres and tempos with pitch-perfect mixing and an ear for hooks that makes each track stand out. (She calls herself "genre fluid.") She's said so much in the lengthy, excellent interview below, so we can keep this part brief. Her RA...
May 30, 2022•1 hr 15 min
Nick León is part of a newer generation of Miami producers who infuse modern-day club music with sounds from around the region, everything from Miami bass to reggaeton. In León's case, his most recent—and most exciting—music has focused on beats inspired by reggaeton and its sub-genre perreo, but with a musical palette that speaks to a love of electronic music from Aphex Twin to Burial to music on labels like NAAFI and TraTraTrax. (This is a predilection he shares with DJ Python, whom León just ...
May 23, 2022•1 hr 8 min
Toronto's Cindy Li, AKA Ciel, has a knack for balancing warmth and pressure. Her productions and mixes often feel coated in an iridescent gloss, evoking the trippy stylings of '90s UK tech house and the swung drums of classic New York house. In between that, though, there's lots of vigor via sleek electro, rippling trance, barrelling techno and big, bad breakbeats. Her style may lean towards the atmospheric but it's loaded with moxie, giving her the versatility to close out a main room or kick o...
May 16, 2022•1 hr 59 min
Read more: http://ra.co/podcast/831 @madam_x
May 09, 2022•2 hr 27 min
The decade-spanning career of Roy Davis Jr. is intrinsically intertwined with the history of house music. As one of the defining voices of Chicago's underground, he's worked both behind the decks and behind-the-scenes. From handling Strictly Rhythm's A&R sector in the '90s to joining seminal production crew Phuture to launching his own Undaground Therapy Muzik label, Davis Jr. isn't just a veteran but a compendium of dance music knowledge. Daft Punk cites him as an influence while the likes ...
May 02, 2022•1 hr 52 min
There's a track on HAAi's upcoming debut album, Baby, We're Ascending, called "Louder Always Better." That kind of sums up her approach right there. (See also: "Biggest Mood Ever.") Since her first record, 2017's "Be Good" her approach to dance music has been to make as dense, overwhelming and uplifting as possible. Much has been made of her background in psychedelic rock, which definitely informs records like the muggy, intense Motorik Voodoo Bush Doof Musik, but it's not the whole story. A bet...
Apr 25, 2022•1 hr 11 min
Louie Vega shouldn't need an introduction, but we'll do it anyways. The Bronx-born Puerto Rican artist embodies the soulful sound of New York house music, and he's been doing it since the '80s. His history features a litany of legendary names and clubs, from the Devil's Nest to his much-vaunted residency at The Sound Factory in Manhattan, and he's made music with the likes of Todd Terry, Mood II Swing and Barbara Tucker. But it's with Kenny "Dope" Gonzalez that Vega made his most cherished and i...
Apr 18, 2022•1 hr 5 min
