RA Podcast

Kinetic club energy generated by one of the sharpest talents in drum & bass and beyond. Much of the best electronic music rests along the axes of versatility and curiosity: being able to a pull a broad array of influences into your orbit and alchemise it into something distinctive and fresh. That's gyrofield to a tee. Kiana Li began making waves in drum & bass as a teenager, years before setting f...

Deep house with heaps of soul to guide spring into summer. "House music to me is about emotion… it's about how it moves you," says Suze Phaff, better known as Suze Ijó. Emerging from a thriving Dutch scene, Ijó belongs to a generation of DJs reshaping dance culture from the ground up, restoring soul and musicality to the centre of house music. It's a conversation happening not just in her home tow...

Relentless rhythms and Latin dance history, courtesy of the TraTraTrax innovator. Percussion is, at the root, a conversation. It's about different instruments meeting each other, and interacting to form something bigger than the sum of its parts. Few engage in this dialogue as boldly as Pablo De Vargas, AKA Uruguayan experimentalist Lechuga Zafiro, who draws from tradition, to make sounds like can...

A mix beamed in from the future by singeli's young star. If singeli has a new era, DJ Travella is its leading light. At just 23 years old, the Tanzanian producer is pushing the genre into fast, frenetic and unmistakably futuristic territory. And while there aren't too many entries in the RA Podcast's 20-year history where you can say, "this has no parallel whatsoever," RA.984 shatters that assumpt...

Tripped-out excursions through percussive club music with the Nowadays resident. Ayesha Chugh, AKA Ayesha, makes club music that activates the body. The Brooklyn-based artist has spent the last few years carving out a distinct lane in modern club music. Her fusion of dubstep, techno and essential '90s rave elements into dynamite club tools that test and support dancers in equal measure. This time...

Another Barker masterclass. Sam Barker asks more from techno. The artist known simply as Barker is one of electronic music's most consistently conscientious and curious producers, challenging listeners to question the norms we accept about our shared culture—whether it's the music that fills the room, the process behind it, or the purpose of the space itself. British-born yet based in Berlin since...

Big feelings for big rooms with the Club Heart Broken founder. Club Heart Broken is perhaps a misnomer. The party and label, founded in Cologne by MALUGI, may take its name from one of life's tougher emotions, but the vibe is all about unfettered, unadulterated joy. It's a state of mind its founder fully embodies—he's called himself the "happiest man in dance music." (We tried fact-checking this,...

Modern hypnotics from a new techno star. It's a tale as old as time: techno DJ moves to Berlin to chase a dream. Philippa Pacho is part of the latest wave of talent to tread that familiar path. But don't let that fool you. She's one of the classiest artists around—no TikTok gimmicks here. Pacho's formative years were spent in her native Stockholm, navigating a vibrant DIY party scene that included...

Mesmerising dance floor tapestries from a singular experimental musician. Can you reinvent the human voice? The oldest musical instrument in existence, our voices are the foundation of music as we know it, and few push its limits in electronic music today like Lyra Pramuk. On her masterful debut, Fountain the Berlin-based, US-born artist's voice was the only instrument. No drums, no synths—just he...

Regis and Function's first mix in over 10 years is a unique paean to Silent Servant, heavy on unreleased material. When it came time for RA to compile our Albums of the 2010s, one record with a tauntingly limited availability of 500 copies was never in doubt: Sandwell District's era-defining 'Feed-Forward'. Encompassing Karl O'Connor (Regis), Peter Sutton (Female), David Sumner (Function) and Juan...

Raucous club jams from the trio setting pace for a new generation of electronic fans: Dazegxd, gum.mp3 & Swami Sound, AKA EldiaNYC. Something exciting is happening on the margins of online club music. As one generation ages out, another, predominantly made up of Zoomers and Zillennials who fell into rave music mid-pandemic or arrived via gaming, is on the rise. Some of the most dialled-in electron...

21st century electro-futurism, Helsinki style. Sometime around a decade ago, electro started to surge onto dance floors again. A new generation of DJs, from Helena Hauff and DJ Stingray, brought the sci-fi, cyborg funk to new audiences, as a modern retool of the style began enjoying the ubiquity of its four-to-the-floor cousins. And few embody its future for our current decade like Sunny Seppä, AK...

The in-demand US DJ unfurls dubby, dance floor poetry. Where does sentimentality fit on the dance floor? For Liv Klutse, AKA livwutang, the answer is everywhere. The New York-based DJ is guided by a deep desire to stir connection, finding themes and points of correspondence across an impressively broad range of sounds, tempos and eras. This emotional intuition lends Klutse's sets a depth few other...

Three hours of high-intensity heaters from the trio lighting up US club music. "If the baby boomer generation had the three from Belleville, millennials can say…we have Black Rave Culture." Lofty praise from Spain's WOS Festival, and yet the undeniable buzz surrounding the Washington, D.C. trio of Amal, James Bangura and Nativesun makes it feel merited. The Black Rave Culture experience is physica...

Kaleidoscopic psychedelia from one of Australia's finest. While it might feel early to call bets on DJs of the decade, Kia Sydney, best known as Kia, is undoubtedly one of them. The Animalia founder began in Naarm's (Melbourne) underground scene in the mid-2010s, crediting a trip to the influential deep techno Japanese festival, Labyrinth, as the inspiration behind her sound. Deep techno might not...

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...

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 ma...

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 d...

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 t...

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 re...

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 Schoo...

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...

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...

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 se...

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 con...