RA Podcast

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; a

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 won

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

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 sto

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.

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

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

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 mi

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 Brazili

Sleek, sensual bass science from the NYC SLINK boss, sketching a new blueprint for dub in the 2020s. Kenzo Perron, AKA K Wata, uses bass the way a poet uses punctuation. Sub weight, subtle wobbles and snaking rhythms become commas, dashes and periods—tiny gestures that shape movement, tension and release. Perron's sound sits somewhere between the cavernous minimalism of Rhythm & Sound and the wiry precision of Livity Sound, pulling equally from sound system culture, contemporary minimalism and East Coast club music. His breakthrough 2021 EP, What Do U Wan, sounds like the photo negatives of a Fade to Mind record redesigned for sunrise at Sustain-Release (not to mention his work with Daytimers affiliate Enayet as E-Wata). More broadly, Perron belongs to a a growing American underground reshaping dub techno and bass music in adventurous ways. What sets his music apart, however, is the way it balances delicacy with kineticism and, as his RA Mix makes clear, a touch of sexiness and intimacy too. RA.1039 draws

90 minutes of blissful, sun-soaked house from the essential UK producer duo. For a certain type of DJ, a record from The Trip is a buy-on-sight proposition. Even if the name is new, you’ve likely heard their tracks in sets from Job Jobse, Shanti Celeste or Avalon Emerson. With a catalogue full of records equally at home at Pitch Music & Arts or fabric Room 2, Oliver Hiam and Max van Dijk have locked into a particular sweet spot: big, emotional dance music with enough drive to snap a festival crowd into focus, while still carrying the nuance and emotional pull of the best ’90s club records. The key to this is decidedly old-fashion: clocking hours on the dance floor. Long before they became a hot-shot producer duo, Hiam and van Dijk were promoters first. For more than a decade, they hosted parties at Corsica Studios under the Tessellate banner, bringing artists like DJ Sprinkles, Mr. Ties and Octo Octa to London. Think of RA.1038 as a marker for the start of summer: packed with bongo drums, piano breakdowns

The emergent star of the Belgian underground delivers 80 minutes of spectral techno, electro and leftfield obscurities. Lola Haro has clubbing in her DNA. The Brussels-based DJ grew up around electronic music, with parents who were regulars at Antwerp’s Café d’Anvers and a childhood shaped by record stores and a household soundtracked by Villalobos mixes. Since emerging in the late 2010s, she’s become a key figure in the Belgian underground, moving within a loose network of “diggers” exploring the deeper corners of electro, techno and house. That sensibility comes through clearly on RA.1037, where Haro drifts through spectral techno, electro and leftfield club obscurities. The mix unfolds like a fever dream: spacious grooves give way to uneasy bass pressure and jagged, alien rhythms, before slipping back into murky, immersive flow. Rather than genre, mood binds the set—slow, creeping tension and a sense of something always on the verge of collapse. Drawing on a recent warehouse set in Melbourne, it’s a s

A rare snapshot of house music's early days, captured through an unheard 1986 broadcast from the East Coast pioneer. For Humphries' long overdue debut on the RA Mix series, we publish an original, unedited radio recording from 1986, during Humphries' glorious reign over KISS FM's airwaves at the right hand of Shep Pettibone. Drawn from Humphries' own archives, the Running Back-sanctioned release captures the breadth of his reach at a time when he was breaking records week in, week out—bridging New Jersey talent, European imports and the emerging Chicago sound in a single sweep. Every Friday and Saturday night, for over a decade, Tony Humphries checked in to Kiss FM, bringing the club to the airwaves. Alongside a residency at New Jersey's answer to Paradise Garage, Club Zanzibar, Humphries helped define the sound of garage house on the New York–New Jersey axis. Like Larry Levan, you simply can’t think of the city’s scene without him. The hour-long mix shivers with spectral vocals and solar-plexus grooves al

The star of São Paulo chops up 60 minutes of futuristic, global club sounds. It's an oft-heard cliché to describe an artist as truly singular. But with Roniere Santos, AKA RHR, it couldn't be more true. Part of a generation of Brazilian and Latin American artists reshaping club music, Santos and his peers have propelled it to unprecedented global reach. His sets—fearsome, bass-driven and unbound by BPM—have made him essential at some of the world's most forward-thinking clubs and festivals, from Horst to Berghain to Gop Tun. Behind the decks, his radical approach is both audible and felt through the body, driven by uncanny beatmatching and fluid harmonic mixing. Sonically, he pairs a knowledge of sound design with restless curiosity about music spanning continents and subcultures—evident in this recording, where Brazilian rap meets maqam-inspired melodies and breakbeat sections blend with deconstructed baile funk loops. And while his reach is now global, Santos remains inseparable from São Paulo. It's wher

A maximalist sprint through IDM and acid from the Filipino DJ, producer and lore magnet. Ramon Tambucon is, in his own words, "an EDM trap oldhead" through and through. But he takes his work seriously: on TikTok, the LA-based artist has become Gen Z's de-facto electronic music historian, equally at home with Mark Fisher and Skrillex, and has even featured in Forbes discussing IDM. His world extends beyond content, too, obviously. Tabula Rasa, a platform with Jozef White that blends editorial, releases and showcases, has helped document scenes like California's UK garage wave, and Pang's records show a fine-tuned ear for melody. RA.1034 is bright, buoyant and borderline ecstatic. When Pang's own "Forest Volt" hits early, it practically wriggles out of the speakers; from there he snaps between newcomers like Kooxla, '90s Belgian deep cuts from Gerome Sportelli and Burial, with bird calls, flutes and cascading chords flaring over heavy low-end and lightning-fast breaks. Find the tracklist and Q&A at ra.co/p

The lost art of the slow burn, courtesy of the rising London house DJ. In an attention economy, where hype cycles rise and fall faster than ever, our careers, our lives and our club nights are increasingly structured around instant gratification. But not Isaac Carter. The London artist's approach to DJing is understated and unhurried. You'll still find his RA Mix charged with serious bursts of pleasure (wait for the rattling subs to hit on Alexander Skancke's "You Get a Two" or the soaring pads on Sterac's "Mysterium"), but RA.1033 is a patient exploration of the deeper shades of house, and it's technically perfect—there isn't a single hi-hat out of place for its near two-hour run time. Technical prowess aside, what's most impressive is his sense of groove. There are shifts in energy, including a distinctly after hours section about halfway in, but this is a session that could go on forever. It's a fautless soundtrack to ease us into a spring of swing. Find the tracklist at ra.co/podcast/ 1052