RA Podcast

One of the Netherlands' sharpest selectors turns in over two hours of smoke-thick techno and cathartic bass weight. "Genre-defying" has trailed Jasmín Hoek, best known as Jasmín, for years. It isn't wrong—listen to the Dutch-Argentinian artist's mixes and you'll hear anything from Rrose and Blawan to Ricardo Villalobos and DJ Koze. But it misses a better question: what holds it all together? "For every set I play, I think of the colours I want to represent," Hoek explains in her Q&A. For RA.1056, she channels warm, earthy colours; you'll see it running through the tracklist, from "Burning Blood" and "Eruption" to "Chamas E Fumaça." The other constant is percussion over melody. Half Argentinian, Hoek has spoken about her preference for rhythm, and it gives her work a physicality you can almost walk into. It's there from the first minute: Pinch and Shackleton's "Burning Blood," dark and twisted and sprawling. But Hoek is a techno head too, with plenty that wouldn't feel out of place at Berghain: Cari Lekebusch, Rene Wise, Rrose. It's a cliché that the best DJs are dancers first, but Hoek embodies it, having worked at De School and, more recently, programming with Nachtparlement. Last year's Bite The Hand That Feeds You arrived as Hessle Audio's 50th release; this year she lands on fabric Originals. Whatever floor she graces next, she'll arrive with a vision that will take you by the hand, and pull you all the way in. Find the Q&A and tracklist at ra.co/podcast/1075 @Jasminhoek @fabric @hessleaudio

Supersized techno, from the Vault Sessions darling. If you're part of the post-2020 cohort of techno heads, odds are you've heard of Grace Dahl. The Amsterdam native has become ubiquitous the past few years, via her DJing, productions and her label, Serial Disc Touchers. Her techno is energetic, embracing and big without sacrificing complexity or detail. This wasn't overnight, though: born in Hungary to seasoned ravers, Dahl started playing out at 18 and landed a residency at Vault Sessions and regular Berghain appearances soon after. Serial Disc Touchers, Vol. 1, a collaborative EP with Alec Dienarr, moves from ropey tech house to peaktime anthems and after hours acid, held together by her balance of floor functionality and emotional finesse. Dahl brings the same MO to her RA Mix. Starting with a melancholic selection of dubbed-out techno, she waits until the 20-minute mark to get things funky. From there, RA.1055 is all party: bleep techno ready for a carnival, outrageous 303 work and a hint of vintage UK rave, with a tracklist spanning VNTM and Villa to Luke Slater, Underworld and Ian Axide. Big-room techno done right—careful and considerate in selection but ready to blast your boots off. Find the tracklist and Q&A at ra.co/podcast/1074 @gracedahl @vault-sessions-collective

90 minutes of trip-hop and electronica, as the elusive SUED founder walks down memory lane. Everything is cyclical. Stick around long enough and what was new and thrilling, then gauche, comes back around, rediscovered by a generation seeing it with fresh eyes. The trip-hop revival of the 2020s is a neat example. But what does it sound like coming from someone who was there the first time? SW., AKA Stefan Wust, has an answer. The producer co-founded SUED in 2011 with SVN, a label whose hypnotic, stripped-back records arrived untitled and unannounced, and disappeared from Hard Wax just as quietly. For his RA Mix, he reaches back to those formative years, digging through trip-hop, breakbeat and electronica. Famously elusive, he explains in a rare Q&A below that the mix isn't a historical reconstruction but "an attempt to bring that memory back to life through my perspective today." Built from loops, delay and hard cuts, RA.1054 reassembles the music of his youth rather than filing it away. His Reminder series did the same for Detroit and Chicago; this goes somewhere he never has, to the trip-hop and downtempo end of the same decade. An excerpt of Rachmaninov's Liturgy of St John Chrysostom sets church-like choral vocals against decaying electronics from Twine and Gridlock, and of course it wouldn't be trip-hop without Tricky. Find the tracklist and Q&A at ra.co/podcast/1073

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 most recognisable figures in UK dance music: major festival stages, a BBC Radio 6 Music show and even a MOBO award. Yet after putting herself through over 100 shows a year, and turning 30, she began to question the pace of life as a touring DJ. The deaths of two close family members over the past 12 months brought those questions into focus, reshaping how she thinks about DJing, friendship, club culture and what she wants to leave behind. In this Exchange, SHERELLE speaks with RA Editor Gabe Szatan about learning to take pride in her achievements, resisting the pressure to turn music into social media content and giving UK bass artists their flowers while they're still here. She also discusses Hooversound—the label she runs with NAINA—racial and class hierarchies that shape dance music, and Rest & Restoration, her new party built around longer sets, affordable tickets and a simple philosophy to slow down, and make time for the people you love. Listen to the episode in full. @iamsherelle

A New York summertime block party in all of its glory. New York City has had an epic few months. From clinching a milestone NBA Championship title, to Mayor Mamdani rolling out affordable housing and fixing potholes, to World Cup fever, the summer of 2026 has (for the most part) been a rush of elation for residents. Soundtracking it all is Public Service. A free, monthly party run by DJs Toribio and Mickey Perez, this all-ages affair hit record crowds in recent editions ever since launching five years ago. Even if there's no special occasion, the atmosphere is always electric. Multiple dance cyphers form; musicians bring instruments to jam; free pizza is distributed; informal marketplaces emerge in the back. Public Service is a living tapestry of block party culture, serving as a reminder that church-like communal joy doesn't need four walls or a roof. Taking place in Brooklyn parks during the summer and clubs during cold weather, the party has also held editions in Detroit, Miami and Montréal. Sound is powered by hot pink speaker stacks, decorated with flower garlands, courtesy of Karlala Soundsystem whose founder Karl Scholz regularly provides rentals for free or at a sliding scale to cultural organisers. Toribio and Perez man the decks each time, dishing out heaters across Afro house, dembow, cumbia, electro, hip-hop and techno. It might be the city's only DIY party where you can hear Jackmaster, Kendrick Lamar and Willie Colón in a single hour or see kids, aunties and grandfathers in the crowd. RA.1053 is a recording of this year's season opener in May—its vibrant blends and carnival-like mood will likely have more than a few listeners planning trips to experience the magic. Find the tracklist and Q&A at ra.co/podcast/1072 @publicservicenyc @mickeyperez @toribiomusic

The titan of UK bass delivers a head trip through dub's past, present and future, one year on from RA.1000.Time has a way of slipping through the fingers. A year ago, RA.1000 marked the 1,000th release in the RA Mix series. Now, 52 weeks on, we've arrived at RA.1052—and first up is Kevin Richard Martin, AKA The Bug, finally making his long-awaited debut on the series. Ask anyone who's stood within earshot of a soundsystem he's operating: Martin doesn't so much make music as engineer entire weather systems. His music demands total immersion, from the earthquake-like bass weight of anthems like "Skeng" and "Poison Dart" to the post-apocalyptic pull of his slower steppers. As he told RBMA in 2018: "The more music becomes relegated to a cheap accessory, the less people will realise there's great magic in music as a form." For his RA Mix debut, Martin delivers "nocturnal dives into the city with memories of Blade Runner on repeat." A tribute to PRESSURE, his Berlin night, RA.1052 runs through Porter Ricks, Dillinja and Tikiman, charting dub's kaleidoscopic range — from Basic Channel's minimalism to K Wata's sleek bass science. A year ago, RA.1000 looked back on two decades since 2006. RA.1052 picks up the torch and keeps walking. See you here again next year. Find the tracklist and Q&A at ra.co/podcast/1071 @thebugofficial

An antidote to the summertime banger, with an hour of breezy ambient from the Vienna artist. When we picture the summertime banger, we picture high energy. But with record-breaking heatwaves from South Korea to the South of France, a different soundtrack makes sense. Cue RA.1051. Across an hour of woozy lo-fi electronics—many his own productions—Mietze Conte offers the alternative, inspired, as he puts it below, by "the fresh cool cleansing breeze" after a storm. At his most energetic, the Vienna artist appeals to fans of Live From Earth or 1tbsp—eurodance meets hyperpop with a DIY smirk. At his most contemplative, he drifts toward the ambient reverie of Otto Benson and Dylan Henner. What ties it together is playfulness: songs under two minutes, hand-drawn covers, music that's deeply serious and deeply unserious at once. Here he goes wide without raising the temperature, from Green-House to Nala Sinephro to Terekke's dub-hazed loops. Step into his world and find some much-needed shade. Find the tracklist and Q&A at ra.co/podcast/1070 @mietzeconte

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 on Poly Kicks and his own label, All Caps. Both walked away from them after a week in a Welsh cottage in 2015, when they wrote the material that would form the foundations of Overmono—today, one of the most popular projects in dance music today. What binds them now is a set of self-imposed rules, designed to produce interesting accidents out of the studio. On their new record, Pure Devotion, that meant engineering genuinely out-of-the-box experiments: baking a crash cymbal in the oven overnight to see how would change with heat; running tape past magnets to erase half of what they were recording as they recorded it; and writing 84 versions of one album track, "Knights in Shining Prada," before settling on one that would make the cut. The brothers write obsessively in studios, hotels, airplanes and tour buses, a shared instinct honed to the point that they rarely disagree during the production process. In this Exchange, RA Editor Gabe Szatan sat down with Tom and Ed to reflect on some of their more surprising musical inspirations, letting go of other people's opinions and summoning the courage to walk away from two solo careers that were arguably at their peak. Pure Devotion is out August 7th on XL Recordings. Listen to the episode in full.

The Príncipe all stars transmit the future sound of batida, live from Waking Life. In theory, a supergroup should be a carefree yet thrilling assembly of well-known talents, bound to multiply each other's creative output. But in practice, bringing out the best in every artist on stage, especially for electronic musicians, most of whom are used to working solo, is not an exact science. O Ghettão—the powerhouse trio of DJ Niggafox, DJ Danifox and Firmeza, all associated with Lisbon's Príncipe record label—however, prove it can live up to it's promise. Armed with a handful of small drum machines, hand-sized controllers, and laptops packed with drum kits, the three are one the most exhilarating live acts in the underground. About 20 minutes into RA.1050, amid an intoxicating polyrhythmic hoodoo, a commanding voice sneaks in the repeated phrase in over wistful, semba-laced chords. "Each one dances as they like," claims the MC in Portuguese, and few phrases could be more evocative of the O Ghettão sound. The wonder team came together at the latest Waking Life in Portugal and recorded another woozy, freeform live PA—a gargantuan patchwork ranging from outlandish batida to slapping acid house. RA.1050 is also an indisputable sign of how vivid the batida scene, one they all forged, has truly become. Príncipe Records, founded in 2011, has spurred the birth of artists and imprints, like Nídia and Tia Maria Produções, while also fueling a new, welcoming spirit in Lisbon's nightlife, from Rua Rosa to clubs like Lux Frágil. Following a path paved by acts such as Underground Resistance, O Ghettão can indeed be tagged as an electronic music group. More than that, however, they're an impressive showcase of the intense renewal of sonic palettes crossed by Afro-diasporic idioms on the dance floor. Read more at ra.co/podcast/1069

The long-anonymous Peak Oil favourite breaks cover with two hours that run from post-punk and dub to vintage New York house. Mystery is a powerful force. What stays unknown stays enticing—negative space the listener fills in for themselves. Minimalists may be its largest constituency, and few have held the line as long as Topdown Dialectic. That changed with False LP A, which finally named him: Izaak Schlossman, a San Francisco photographer who spent years issuing untitled, identically timed tracks with no narrative attached. Coming out of the shadows hasn't cost the music its haze. Working in the Basic Channel lineage, Schlossman lays tracing paper over house and dub techno and pulls through the faintest outline—a bassline's shadow, the memory of a chord. Tracks surface the way bodies emerge in a steam room. He belongs to a North American underground that's been among dance music's most progressive forces this past decade—no surprise, then, that he credits Scott Zacharias of Detroit's No Way Back in the Q&A. This isn't quite the end of the mystery. Only the second Topdown Dialectic mix to surface, RA.1049 wipes the condensation from the glass just long enough for a look inside: it opens with a cut from German label Workshop before drifting from atmospheric post-punk and dubbed-out house into cosmic electro and, by the close, vintage New York house. It moves at an unhurried, chugging pace, but never mistakes restraint for stasis—each track quietly recalibrating until another contour comes into view. Find the tracklist and Q&A at ra.co/podcast/1068 @peakoil @falsearalia @aught0101

A masterclass in the art of the all-nighter, as one of France's finest purveyors of funk delivers six hours live from Robert Johnson. What does minimal sound like in 2026? Ask five DJs and you'll get five answers, from the acidic electro and techno of Montevideo to the dubby loops of Montreal. A real contender for the face of contemporary minimal, though, is Romain Poncet, AKA Traumer. Poncet is, in many ways, old school. As a DJ, he offers a French twist on Rominimal: long, drawn-out loops mixed with imperceptible precision. In the studio, he turns out the kind of records you'd find in Raresh's bag. He didn't start out a minimal head, though. His early-'10s releases were driving techno and tech house, but around 2016 the Parisian changed tack, launching GET TRAUM — a label steeped in both Bucharest's ar:pia:r and France's own history of deep, stripped-back house. Whatever the genre, his music is understated, never showy: DJ tools in the truest sense, designed for dancers and for DJs who want to tell a story over a long set. Case in point is RA.1048, a six-hour recording from Robert Johnson. The drums skip like kids let out for summer; the melodies sit between euphoria and melancholy. Swallow it whole or savour it course by course — RA.1048 is a Traumer tasting menu. Read more at ra.co/podcast/1067 @traumer

77 minutes of wickedly twitchy grooves from the belly of the New York underground. "Music is meant to be shared. Music is meant to be shared. Music is meant to be shared." This phrase is written again and again in the About section for the mix series and label pi pi pi. For deep creep, the force behind the popular platform, it serves as a radical promise: music is, and must always be, collective and communal. On RA.1047, deep creep digs appropriately deep into her bag with a mix of minimal, tech house and dub, as well as flashes of techno and even a little flirt with electroclash. Pulses of sub weight, dubby melodies, introspective synths and quirky minimal funk make for a mix both dark yet euphoric, claustrophobic yet spacious. Dive in. Read the Q&A at ra.co/podcast/1066

90 minutes of scintillating house and techno, primed for the heart of summer. There's something delightfully paradoxical about Jennifer Loveless. Her productions skew hedonistic yet minimal; her DJing feels both spacey and oceanic. Hell, even her artist bio underlines her taste for opposites: "Jennifer Loveless is contrary to her name, all heart." This yin and yang runs through RA.1046. Built around swung percussion, the 97-minute mix wanders across genre and time with an aquatic sensibility. She mixes her own tunes with early '00s tech house to craft a seaside mise en scène where new-school heroes like Pancratio and Ladymonix share fruity cocktails with certified legends (K-HAND, Jay Tripwire). Strap in for deep cuts that sound simultaneously galactic and like they floated up from the ocean floor. Read the Q&A at ra.co/podcast/1064

Two sublime hours of house and techno from the Berlin-based DJ and producer, making his long-awaited RA Mix debut. Before clubs shut down in 2020, Christian AB was one of the underground's best-kept secrets. The London-born DJ built a cult following through sets that fused deep house, techno and impossibly rare records, earning a reputation as an IYKYK selector with encyclopaedic taste. Now based in Berlin, Christian Browne has stepped into the spotlight, releasing on Francesco Del Garda's Timeless and Ryan Elliott's Faith Beat, while touring alongside Jeff Mills in support of Live at Liquid Room. Browne describes his sound as "dark elegance," and RA.1045 captures it perfectly. Across two hours, driving grooves, acid lines, hazy chords and moments of tension unfold with remarkable patience. The first half-hour drifts through IDM and ambient house before the mix gradually tightens its grip, but every apparent peak is met with an unexpected left turn. It's a masterclass in pacing that rewards repeat listens. Forget the track IDs—just press play. Read the Q&A at ra.co/podcast/1065 @christian_ab

A lesson in universal love, told via deep club grooves. When future heads look back at New York nightlife from the mid-2010s onwards, the name Love Injection will stand out. As historians, stewards and disciples of underground dance music, Barbie Bertisch and Paul Raffaele live and breathe the culture's inclusive, anti-commercial and anti-egotistical ideals. Underlining their myriad pursuits–DJing, promoting, publishing, curation, the list goes on–are ironclad principles destined to cement their legacy. On RA.1044, the duo keep it real. Recorded spontaneously, it shows off their core palette: timeless Detroit house courtesy of Scott Grooves, leftfield 303 squelches from Magic Mountain High, the classic dub techno of Rhythm & Sound and plenty more besides. It's a living history of Love Injection, delivered with their signature level of passion and care. Find the tracklist and Q&A at ra.co/podcast/1063

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 "drainers"—overwhelmingly under 30. Bladee has long been one of Drain Gang's most prominent voices, building a prolific solo career alongside the collective's output. His work engages with mysticism through vulnerable, diaristic lyrics about his state of mind. On his new album, Sulfur Surfer, he presents an autobiographical figure caught between "letting go and holding on"—a continuation of his longstanding interest in spirituality and the occult. He draws on the story of St. George, the Swedish painter Hilma af Klint and the occultism of British group Current 93, whose frontman David Tibet makes a guest appearance. In this RA Exchange, Bladee talks about making honest music, the role Drain Gang has played in pushing him to find his voice, his ambivalence about fame and his collaboration with Skrillex. Sulfur Surfer is out now on Trash Island. Listen to the episode in full.

90 minutes of wistful house from a talented Steel City Dance Discs affiliate—perfect for easing into the night or winding down after the party. Since Resident Advisor dubbed Pretty Girl "a star in the making" in 2023, the Melbourne DJ has played Coachella, gone viral on Boiler Room, and remixed Romy and Fred Again.. But she’s taken stardom on her own terms. Instead of stadium-ready adrenaline, her sound is a balanced cocktail of UK garage, sugary vocals, and '90s electronica whimsy, finding the sweet spot between the charts and the club. Her RA Mix perfectly captures this depth of emotion. The lush, unhurried session moves nimbly through Donato Dozzy, Tin Man, and unreleased Pretty Girl goodies. Full of overcast chords and melancholy arpeggios, it’s an exquisite journey that will sound just as good in the club as it will in the taxi home. Find the tracklist and Q&A at ra.co/podcast/1062

Seven hours of camp, chug and genre-hopping hedonism from techno's two princes of darkness, recorded live at Kyiv's ∄. Hear the names Hayden Payne, aka Phase Fatale, and Pablo Bozzi, and it might conjure visions of dark techno. As Berghain and KHIDI residents, both artists are synonymous with the heavier strands of misfit dance music. But Soft Crash, their lockdown-born joint venture, offers something different: making the world's darkest dance floors fun again. RA.1042 is a crash course through the campier ends of the spectrum, pulling from Italo, disco, and house for a mix full of vocals, ascending chords, and bouncy arpeggios. Clocking in at a gargantuan seven-hour runtime, the mix perfectly balances both of their styles without the energy ever dipping. Swinging for the fences with chuggy, oddball bangers and trance euphoria, the duo weaves tracks from Steffi and Virginia, Goldfrapp, and Junior Jack, alongside climactic Easter eggs from Moby, Madonna, and Underworld. It's the sound of a party you never want to end. Read the Q&A at ra.co/podcast/1061

Entirely unreleased, undeniably funky techno. Charles Accarisi, AKA Chlär, treats techno like a science. From his earliest days as an audio engineer, the Lisbon-via-Switzerland artist has approached techno with the precision of a seasoned experimentalist, dissecting our love of listening to kick drums in dark, sweaty clubs down to its very bones. Before launching his label, Primal Instinct, in 2023, he dug deep, building its foundation on neuroscience studies exploring syncopation and bass frequencies. Yet, for all its academic rigor, Accarisi's music remains incredibly funky. You can hear this endless pursuit of groove in his DJ sets. His productions flit across the techno continuum with similar versatility. One minute, as half of Funk Assault, he's flipping a Beastie Boys vocal into a 140-BPM weapon; the next, he aims straight for the head, trading peak-time bacchanalia for the haunted hypnotism of the afterhours. RA 1041 is all of this and more. Composed entirely of unreleased tracks, it delivers 70 minutes of heads-down techno in its purest form. It's heavy and dark, for sure, but undeniably swung, seamlessly bridging dub techno and sweat-inducing hardgroove throwbacks. This is contemporary techno synthesized by a master chemist. Read the Q&A at ra.co/podcast/1060 @chlaer @primalinstinctrecords

The São Paulo-based artist tears through baile funk, ballroom, Latin club and techno in a turbo-charged showcase of global club music's cutting edge. Take one look at Clementaum behind the decks and she seems less like a DJ than a force of nature. Dressed to the nines and usually keeping time with a fan, she mixes impossibly chaotic drum patterns that ricochet from baile funk to ballroom, Baltimore club to kuduro. Her sets are packed with her own productions—deliciously chaotic collisions of two decades of Latin American club music, shaken hard with EDM and techno. Raised in Curitiba, Clementaum entered nightlife as a hostess before stepping behind the decks and beginning to produce in 2018. A Rinse FM residency followed in 2023, her first European tour in 2024 and now, fresh off her debut Oceania run, she has her sights set on the rest of the globe. RA.1040 is a turbo-charged introduction to Clementaum's sonic world. Loaded with unreleased tracks from herself as well as other rising figures in the Brazilian underground, it captures the bleeding edge of global club music: ecstatic horn lines, flubber-bounce kick drums, freewheeling vocal samples, stadium-sized breakdowns, video game arpeggios and basslines that seem to rearrange space-time itself. It's possible you haven't heard a Clementaum set before, but it's impossible to forget one when you have. Find the tracklist and Q&A at ra.co/podcast/1059 @clementaum