RA Exchange

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 conversati...

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...

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 journa...

Frontman Paul Banks on the legacy band's creative evolution, why he prefers hip-hop to rock and their new album, This Mirror Weighs a Ton. Interpol might not be electronic in the traditional sense, but they've long been the techno fan's indie band of choice. Cofounded by lead singer Paul Banks and guitarist Daniel Kessler in 1997—Banks is the lyricist, Kessler the composer—they emerged in Manhatta...

Jorja Smith's career took off in 2016, when "Blue Lights" introduced her voice to a global audience. In the 10 years since that single went stratospheric, the Walsall-born artist has released three albums, collaborated with Drake, Burna Boy, Wizkid and Ezra Collective, and built an international career without ever signing to a major label. Her third album, What Are The Odds , marks a new chapter,...

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...

The US musician, poet and performance artist reflects on "queer rap,” the industry that boxed him into it and the reinvention he's built on the other side. A consummate multi-hyphenate, Mykki Blanco (formerly she/her, now he/him) came up in a specific New York moment: the early '10s crossover between queer nightlife, noise and a rap underground that was just beginning to loosen its grip on who was...

Decades after walking away from trance, the superstar DJ unpicks the machinery behind his own brand, and what a career spent at the top actually costs. Tiësto has been one of the biggest DJs in the world for the better part of 30 years. Since the '90s, the Dutch artist has been part of an elite inner circle who dominate major festival bills, residencies in Ibiza and Las Vegas, and command some of...

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...

The genre-fluid multihyphenate on motherhood, songwriting with FKA Twigs and her new album, Heavenly Body: If I'm the Bottle You're the Message. American singer-songwriter Alexandra Drewchin (AKA Eartheater) is hard to pin down by design. In her music, acoustic instruments like harp and guitar collide with heavy digital manipulation, processed beats and classical technique. Her three-octave vocal...

The Dutch producer on flow state, communal music-making and his new album, Music for Existing. Martijn Deijkers, AKA Martyn, has spent close to three decades resisting labels. He grew up in a small Dutch village as a vinyl obsessive, buying his first 7-inch from a store that doubled as a sweet shop, before travelling to London in the mid-'90s to chase jungle and drum & bass. He later became on...

The UK pirate radio crew and cult TV stars discuss their rebirth and forthcoming EP, Grindah's Decided We're Doing Music Again. Many UK natives will be familiar with the show People Just Do Nothing, a mid-2010s comedy about pirate radio crew Kurupt FM, who ride the UK garage wave, broadcasting from the outer boroughs of London. Kurupt FM's core members—MC Grindah, DJ Beats, DJ Steves and DJ Decoy—...

The masked duo go on the record to address criticisms, identity and their forthcoming album, Infinite Now. Anonymous DJ-and-producer duo Two Shell are both loved and reviled. They've spent the last few years making the question of their identity inseparable from their music, earning an enormous fanbase with their original, up-tempo productions, and then alienating much of it through relentless pra...

The Drain Gang cofounder talks about mysticism, Gen Z and his new album, Sulfur Surfer. Bladee's work as a founding member of the Swedish collective Drain Gang has shaped a new generation of underground music. The group's sound, which is rooted in cloud rap and Auto-Tune experimentation, and pulls from trance, noise, metal, goth and grunge, has earned them an enormous following of fans—AKA "draine...

The queer icon and punk provocateur talks bodily autonomy, embracing ageing and her new album, No Lube So Rude. Merrill Nisker—known to most of the world as Peaches—has spent 25 years making music that refuses to behave. Since her 2000 breakthrough, The Teaches of Peaches, she's built a body of work at the intersection of performance art, punk provocation and dance music, becoming an international...

The Dutch photographer and art director on his longtime collaboration with Depeche Mode, moving into feature films and 50 years of documenting music culture. In 1979, the 24-year-old Dutch photographer Anton Corbijn talked his way into a Joy Division shoot in a London Underground tunnel by citing a magazine assignment he didn't have. The band posed with their backs to the camera, and subsequently,...

The jungle DJ and trumpeter talks about late-career popularity, jazz in Japan and what it means to build a life in music. You probably know Takuya Nakamura first and foremost as a viral sensation. The Tokyo-born, New York-based trumpeter has achieved minor internet fame in recent years for playing live trumpet over jungle records on The Lot Radio. But Nakamura was composing and performing for more...

The pioneering artist talks philosophy, Berghain and touring on the eve of her 80th birthday. Suzanne Ciani is a synth music legend. After establishing herself as one of the first virtuosos of Don Buchla's modular system in the 1960s, she went on to earn five Grammy nominations, score a Hollywood film and found her own sound design company—creating iconic commercial soundtracks for Coca-Cola, AT&a...

The Radiohead guitarist talks about finding spirituality, life inside one of the most mythologised (and occasionally polarising) bands of the last 40 years, and his second solo album, Blue Morpho . Ed O'Brien has been a guitarist in Radiohead since the band formed at Abingdon School in the mid '80s, playing a supporting role across a catalogue largely written by Thom Yorke. He comes from a guitar...

The longtime BBC Radio 1 DJ talks about his rigorous music-discovery routine, soundtracking the world's most elite runways and the legacy of his party series, Deviation. Since first stepping onto the airwaves more than 20 years ago, Benji B has spent his career bridging London club culture with the worlds of art and fashion. He's hosted his weekly BBC Radio 1 show for over two decades, founded the...

The musical polymath talks creative left turns, the collapse of music media and her new album as Avalon & the Charm, Written into Changes. A decade after her first feature appearance in Resident Advisor, Avalon Emerson returns for a long-form chat about the arc of her career and her surprising left turn towards indie pop. After leaving a successful career in coding in the early 2010s, the Amer...

The Irish veteran talks about his prolific output, making music beyond the drum & bass canon and his forthcoming album, Tricklemore Sea. Dominick Martin—AKA Calibre—has spent the last three decades carving out one of the most singular paths in electronic music. Known to many as a cornerstone of drum & bass, the Northern Irish artist's work has always defied easy categorisation. His vast ou...

The Dutch phenomenon unpacks the myth of overnight success and the story behind his debut album, Lost, Found & Forgotten. They say it takes ten years to become an overnight success, and in the case of this week's guest, that math almost checks out. Born in Leiden, Chris Stussy has been sharpening his tools for over a decade, and in the years since the pandemic, the world has caught onto his sl...

Electroclash icon Tiga talks about the manosphere, the currency of cool and his first album in 10 years, HOTLIFE. Canadian producer Tiga—born Tiga Sontag—has navigated the peaks and valleys of electronic music for over three decades. A key architect of the electroclash explosion in the early 2000s, Sontag reigned supreme over the indie sleaze era of the dance floor during the 2010s. But eventually...

The London artist talks about self-doubt, overcoming creative blocks and her forthcoming album on Hyperdub. Today's guest has spent the last decade proving that electronic music is an insufficient label for what she does. Since her landmark Hyperdub debut, For You and I, in 2019, Loraine James has moved through the world of IDM, glitch and ambient with a rare kind of emotional transparency. Whethe...