Party-starting stompers from a crossover star. Even if you've never met Adam Longman Parker, AKA Afriqua, you can get to know him pretty well through his music. His lyrics ("Would you house me in a house, would you house right in my mouth?" from "Dr. House"), track titles ("Wagwan Bhagwan?") and cover art exude a charmingly cheeky demeanour that makes his music personable. It helps that his latest records are absolute smashers–funk bombs with jacked beats and bouncy grooves. Once ensconced in th...
Jan 19, 2025•1 hr 53 min
Enter the wormhole with one of the techno artists we're most excited about in 2025. Born in Osaka and now based in Tokyo, DJ MARIA. joins a decorated lineage of Japan's psychedelic elite, cut from a similarly explorative cloth as Wata Igarashi, Haruka and esoteric icons ¥ØU$UK€ ¥UK1MAT$U and DJ Nobu. This nerdy sanctum of deep techno is a notoriously hard world to break into: only the very best make the grade. DJ MARIA.'s head-spinning sets emphasise why she's already part of the club firmament ...
Jan 12, 2025•2 hr 6 min
The Dekmantel favourite kicks off 2025 in an exploratory mood. Since her breakout in 2017, Thessa Thorsing has built an enviable CV: a debut release on Nous'klaer Audio, an album on Dekmantel and a residency at former Amsterdam clubbing institution De School. Over these years, she's honed a singular sound, navigating wild variations in tempo and mood that dance along the edges of techno, IDM and drum & bass (we could list many more, but you know the drill). Her creative arc has seen her delv...
Jan 06, 2025•1 hr 23 min
Ring in 2025 with a three-hour flex from a hero of UK club culture. They don't make DJs like Lukas Wigflex anymore. The Nottingham DJ and promoter has a love for UK club culture that borders on the unfathomable—and he does it all with a gusto that is unmistakably, one hundred percent pure Lukas. Wigflex started out as a "Wigflex Wednesdays," a free bar night in Nottingham with two-for-one pizzas to hook punters in. In the 19 years since, it has grown into one of the UK's most established party s...
Dec 29, 2024•3 hr 15 min
A wintry collage from one of 2024's breakout stars. As far as crossover electronic success goes, Barry Can't Swim's 2024 scorecard would take some beating. His singles have racked up hundreds of millions of streams, he bagged a Mercury Prize nomination and has the range to both pack out festivals as a DJ and sell out tours worldwide with a string-accented live show. Barely 12 months on from the release of debut album "When Will We Land?", it's fair to say Josh Mannie is one of the most in-demand...
Dec 22, 2024•1 hr 2 min
A lesson in rhythm from a former De School resident. When it comes to minimalist dance music, Ruben Üvez, AKA Konduku, is one of the best in the game right now. With a masterful and ever-shapeshifting understanding of rhythm, the Berlin-based artist crafts sublime dance music with a staunchly leftfield bent. Don't just take our word for it: how many DJs, after all, can claim to have moved De School to a puddle of tears? Musically, Üvez is hard to pin down. He's often billed as a techno artist, b...
Dec 13, 2024•1 hr 34 min
One of Mexico City's key players in session. Paulina Rodriguez, AKA Paurro, came to club music relatively late in life. It took hold of her for the first time when she was in her twenties, during a chance visit to the legendary London institution, fabric, in 2008. One look at her CV today would confirm that she's definitely made up for the late start. Sixteen years later, Rodriguez has worn nearly every hat in the industry, from radio programming, label management and PR to residencies at Mexico...
Dec 09, 2024•2 hr 9 min
The producer best known as Huerco S. accompanies One Day, our record of the year, with two hours of minimal and dub introspections. This summer, Kansas-raised DJ and producer Brian Leeds released One Day under his revived Loidis alias. Enamoured with the restrained, loopy sounds of early '00s dance music, the album’s eight tracks linger in the air, luxuriating in dubbed-out chords, swung beats and sub vibrations. It's our favourite record of 2024 for a reason. It's a sound he's coined, in his ty...
Dec 01, 2024•1 hr 46 min
The longtime Perlon affiliate goes for big basslines and big grooves. It's 1996, and a young Fumiya Tanaka is shelling out hefty yet minimal percussive techno at Club Rockets in Osaka to an audience enraptured. Released as Mix-Up, the 90-minute recording captures Tanaka sounding rather like Jeff Mills or Surgeon. It's far cry from the sound he's known for today. Fumiya Tanaka's creative arc has seen him move away from these thunderous sounds to warmer shades of house and minimal. Since 2016, he'...
Nov 22, 2024•1 hr 34 min
Punk house and techno from a modern Midwest icon. Every DJ has their own genesis story: a pivotal sound, a formative scene, a defining philosophy. In Kiernan Laveaux's case, her philosophy, rooted in psychedelia and experimentation, sets her apart. Inspired by Nine Inch Nails, Depeche Mode and New Order, she came of age in Cleveland’s acid house and queer party scenes, developing an ethos that constantly pushes dance music’s limits. Her DJ style is scrambled (in the best way), with zany tricks l...
Nov 14, 2024•2 hr 23 min
A dubstep legend roars back. When dubstep ruled the roost in the late '00s, electronic music had no shortage of icons and spinoff variants to rally around. But one rumble from Bristol stood out: the Purple sound. Popularised by Joker, AKA Liam Mclean, with Guido and Gemmy in support, it hit like a beam of bright light flooding through the basement dank. When America cottoned onto bass quakes in the next decade, Mclean's taste for chiptune-coded synths and maximum intensity kept his vision alive ...
Nov 11, 2024•57 min
Dubstep-tech hybrids from one of 2024's most forward-thinking breakouts. Born in France to English parents, Beatrice M. is a product of two environments. And like many third culture kids, this lends the Rinse France resident and Bait label head a knack for seeing the realm of possibility beyond arbitrary borders and binaries. Beatrice M. is a part of a wider cohort of artists spearheading an elastic take on dubstep: take Carré and Introspekt in the US, EMA in Dublin and Mia Koden in London, to n...
Nov 01, 2024•1 hr 4 min
A new record for the longest RA Podcast ever: Ten hours from the powerhouse duo sweeping techno, Chlär and Alarico. Both commanding performers in their own right, sparks fly when the Swiss-Italian duo of Funk Assault combine. The buzz surrounding their productions, DJing and their label Primal Instinct is at fever pitch, and short wonder: when it comes to gritty, high-impact sets that barrel through multiple shades of techno, few are in their league right now. RA.960 was laid down at Watergate t...
Oct 28, 2024•9 hr 55 min
Effervescent club cuts from one of Southeast Asia's rising DJ stars. In Indonesia, the term santai (relaxed) is more than just an adjective—it's a lifestyle, one endearingly embodied by DITA. The New Delhi-born, Bali-rooted DJ's breezy attitude to life is reflected in dreamy, blissful euphoria. DITA's RA Podcast is a window into both her disposition and sound, blending wiggly breakbeat into tweaking acid, Detroit house into Spanish electro, Balearic to '90s house and some grittier club fare, too...
Oct 17, 2024•2 hr 3 min
A journey through 35 years of house from the godfather of UK rave. In popular mythology, the '90s are without question, the halcyon days of dance music—an era of free raves and unadulterated hedonism. It's a myth that Matthew Nelson, AKA Slipmatt, knows better than most–he was there. During the late '80s, as the rave scene in the UK began to boom, Nelson began moonlighting as a DJ. He would land his first residency at Raindance, the East London rave that launched in September 1989 and would beco...
Oct 11, 2024•2 hr 9 min
The singular Príncipe artist showcases her shapeshifting sound. Before she was simply Nídia, Nídia Borges was Nídia Minaj. Modelled after a musical idol of hers, Nicki Minaj, in 2017, she shed the borrowed surname. As she later said in an interview with The New York Times, "Today I have my own identity. I'm not going to imitate something that someone has done already." And Nídia couldn't be further from an imitator. As one of Príncipe's two non-male members, her body of work stands apart even wi...
Oct 07, 2024•1 hr 1 min
Maximalist house from the sibling duo at the forefront of Berlin's new wave. Berlin is built on dance music. But of the many DJs who live, work and play there, few represent the evolution in the city's club culture like Tania and Dominik Humeres-Correa, AKA S-candalo. If the city was once governed by the tyranny of minimal, the post-pandemic era has cemented its reputation as the spot for "more-is-more" club soundtracks. It's still house and techno, but the chords are big, the drums are big and ...
Sep 30, 2024•1 hr 30 min
Living, breathing, banging techno from an artist defining the highly-textured new frontier of the sound in 2024. Lindsey Wang, AKA Polygonia, has an amorphous style you could call organic—or, better yet, harmonious. She interweaves unfamiliar elements with a mercurial touch. Wang can make something completely otherworldly sound totally, well, natural. It's made her a fixture everywhere from Munich's BLITZ to major festivals like Sustain-Release and Draaimolen. Unsurprisingly, Wang is not one to ...
Sep 23, 2024•1 hr 23 min
Three sizzling hours from the mind behind one of the world's best labels, Kalahari Oyster Cult. What you'll hear on this week's RA Podcast is the closing slot of 2024's Organik Festival—already a coveted moment. But as the sun dipped on Taiwan's north coast, something else was going on: Rey Colino was laying down quite possibly the set of his life. We're big fans of Colino, AKA Colin Volvert, here at RA. Few do it better when it comes to the type of pacy, lysergic thumpers that have become synon...
Sep 16, 2024•3 hr 10 min
In time for 9/9, here's… 999999999. The Italian duo's reputation as a rave demolition crew has made them one of the most in-demand acts on the global circuit. Too nosebleed for 'business', and too close to Defqon.1-level hardstyle to be hard techno in the classic sense, 999999999's headline sets practically require a new category to convey the sense of scale: let's call it megatechno. Following a string of unsubtle yet undeniably impactful hit records in the late 2010s, Carlo B. & Giovanni C...
Sep 09, 2024•1 hr 5 min
90 mins of Two Shell, live from Horst. We've been angling for an RA Podcast from Two Shell ever since they shifted from lowkey producers into hijinx hackers rummaging around the dance music mainframe. Now that we've bagged a mix from clubland's premier iconoclasts, it still poses more questions than it answers: Was this pre-recorded? What's the deal with that AI voice guiding the set along? How can we be sure it was even them? Hang on: is "even them" even them? What we can tell you is that the d...
Sep 02, 2024•1 hr 28 min
Ask Berlin's network of revered deep diggers who their favourite "DJ's DJ" is, and there's a strong chance you'll hear one name immediately pop up: KRN. Phil Kearney, AKA KRN, is one of those rare types who has built a reputation away from the limelight. Formerly a resident at The Ghost's Hoppetosse party as well as a Get Perlonized devotee (plus, full disclosure, reviewing events and working at RA in the mid-2010s), he's well-versed in both wiggle and waft. The hubbub around KRN can be put down...
Aug 26, 2024•1 hr 16 min
A glorious ode to sound system culture. For her RA Podcast, Brooklyn-based DJ Ayanna Heaven celebrates vibrations echoing down the ages, connecting seven decades of trailblazers and trendsetters. It's a soundtrack we've timed with an eye to that golden late summer run of Notting Hill Carnival, Brooklyn's West Indian Day Parade and several crucial dates in the Jamaican calendar. Since 2020, the Brooklyn-based DJ, ethnomusicologist, dancehall advocate and promoter has held down two shows on the ci...
Aug 19, 2024•1 hr 1 min
A roaring hour from one of the most vital talents in Naarm: First Nations producer Paul Gorrie, AKA DJ PGZ. The Gunai/Kurnai and Yorta Yorta artist is a fixture of forward-thinking dance music in Australia, with releases on labels like Butter Sessions, Pure Space and !K7, as well as numerous club and festival gigs on the circuit. An international breakout moment for the Naarm (Melbourne)-based talent feels inevitable. There's much to be said about the lack of visibility and support for Indigenou...
Aug 12, 2024•1 hr 1 min
Speedy percussion meets screwface basslines: the Parisian club maestros are in session. Trying to find one word to describe the music of Amor Satyr and Siu Mata could run you into difficulty. But if we were to try, we'd reach for amphibian: slippery, nimble and evading borders with ease. With solo and shared releases on labels like SSPB, HARDLINE, TraTraTrax and their own WAJANG, they have evident kinship with what moves contemporary dance floors. The pair are also linked to the rise of an alche...
Aug 05, 2024•2 hr 8 min
What does great techno sound like in 2024? Enter LYDO. This week's RA Podcast captures @lydole in full flow, combining the old-school vernacular of European and North American techno—reduced rhythms, hi-hats and punchy 909s—with tracks from the new guard (Sev Dah, GiGi FM, D.Dan) sprinkled throughout. After moving to New York in 2015, the Vietnamese-American sound artist and X-XTRA.SERVICES founder became one of BASEMENT's first residents; the scene built around the revered Queens club has helpe...
Jul 28, 2024•1 hr 5 min
Bangers from around the globe. Dar Disku launched with a question: how to channel heritage into dance floor elation? Well, when your name translates to 'home of the disco,' the brief feels pretty self-explanatory. In the first few years, that meant crafting edits of Khaliji hi-NRG and Bollywood soundtracks to fit contemporary 'crates. They took off as DJs through a run of radio and parties in the UK—where they currently reside—flexing deep finds from across the SWANA region. Their vibrant debut ...
Jul 22, 2024•1 hr 31 min
Wormhole techno from a DJ you need to know. KYRUH is a high-impact specialist forced in the crucible of modern NYC's notable spaces, including WIRE, Dweller and Bossa Nova Civic Club. Their sound is that of a DJ skilled at pressure without requiring shortcuts through obvious terrain, adept at hammering it without defaulting to speed alone. After years burning a hole through the American underground, 2024 is proving to be a tipping point. KYRUH's appearance on Kelela remix compilation RAVE:N in s...
Jul 15, 2024•1 hr 7 min
As a producer and DJ, TSVI is in the form of his life—which you can't always say for an artist a decade in. He's been an enduring presence through several underground cycles for a reason: the man knows how to flow. TSVI's RA Podcast features a solid number of new and forthcoming cuts from the current vanguard pushing club music forward, amongst them Verraco, Surusinghe, DJ Plead, Doctor Jeep, DJ JM, WOST and Dj Babatr—who just dropped a split 12" with TSVI on TraTraTrax last month. Alongside the...
Jul 08, 2024•1 hr 23 min
Pure energy from one of electronic music's brightest lights: Sofia Kourtesis. Clamour had built around the Peruvian artist's poignant brand of house music following a string of EPs and 12"s, culminating in last year's Madres—a passionate, vulnerable and excellent album that resonated widely. Madres packed in rare specificity for a dancefloor record, combining paeans to the power of sound with direct tributes to the neurosurgeon who saved the life of Kourtesis' mother. (Kourtesis even took him cl...
Jul 01, 2024•58 min
