If gqom has a CEO, it's probably DJ Lag. The South African artist has found enormous success since teaching himself to produce and DJ as a teenager in Durban, to the point that he famously worked with Beyoncé on the Lion King soundtrack. His style of gqom, a heaving, powerful type of club music, has become sleek and often catchy, growing from classic tracks like "Ice Drop" into thrilling hybrids like "Lucifer," his collaboration with amapiano artist Lady Du. 

Like so much dance music around the world at this point, DJ Lag's newest productions are informed by the red-hot, ultra-suave sound of amapiano, another South African-born genre. His long-awaited debut album, Meeting With The King, features plenty of flirtations with amapiano and house styles, working with some of South Africa's most talented artists and coming up with a sound he's christened Gqom 2.0. You can hear DJ Lag's expansive, exciting vision in his RA Podcast, an hour of cutting-edge South African dance music that lays out some of the sounds (and artists) you'll be hearing all year, from amapiano to Afrotech and Afro house and many intriguing things in between.

Read more including an interview with DJ Lag: https://ra.co/podcast/820

RA.820 DJ Lag

Music

Actress' highlight reel needs little exposition. Darren J. Cunningham has been a prominent yet inscrutable figure in electronic music since the late 2000s, typically flickering to life from the margins before receding into the shadows. Beloved albums like R.I.P., Karma & Desire and Splazsh may switch up the template, but the Actress hallmarks of haze, murk and showstopping beauty remain.

As you'll see in the interview below, he's a man of few words—that's in character for him. What's characteristic, too, is a taste for surprises. Ahead of the release of tenth studio album Statik on esteemed Norwegian label Smalltown Supersound next month, here's the "Дарен Дж. Каннінгем RA Mix"—a tapestry of 100 percent original and exclusive Actress music you won't find anywhere else. Flowing between pensive, rugged and stargazing moods across an album's worth of unaired tracks, Actress' first time stepping up on the RA Podcast was clearly worth the wait.

@actress1

Read more at https://ra.co/podcast/938

RA.938 Actress

Julia Govor is one of those artists who can take the fundamentals of techno and make it sound hers. At this point in her career, the Georgia-born, New York City-based artist has established a style that feels half-Rome school, half Japanese hypnotic techno, but fully Julia Govor. Her label Jujuka has become a home for the stuff, featuring plenty of her own work along with like-minded folks like EMIT and Victoria Mussi, and she recently put out the biggest and best release of her career with the hefty Laika And Ulka Were Here on Semantica.

Her production style carries over to her DJing. Govor's RA Podcast is made up over half her own tracks, and the cuts she picks from others match her style: twirling arpeggios, rushing cascades of synth, heavy but groovy kicks. Much has been made of her childhood in a military family, and how she fell in love with techno via her classical musical education, where she felt drawn to the darker, romantic shades of composition. You get some of that here, but to call Govor's style "dark" would be overly simplistic. Instead it's sleek, aerodynamic and fluid, the kind of techno that gets you lost in a wormhole.

@juliagovor

Read more at https://ra.co/podcast/937

RA.937 Julia Govor

"All in my life, I've gone back and forth between North and East London," Karen Nyame KG said in a recent mini-doc about her studio process. "These areas are multicultural [...] you just become a sponge for that type of energy." More than two decades into her career, these parts of the UK capital remain a defining influence on The Rhythm Goddess, whose music weaves together ideas from across London and the diaspora, blending R&B and soul with global dance music forms.

A leading face of London's hybrid club sound, KG's sound is seductive and luxurious. Her excellent productions, which span UK funky, amapiano and East Coast club, have a velvety touch, as if cut from high-end fabric. Her ear for smoky, sultry grooves, showcased on her Rhythm In The City party-turned-label, is impeccable, and her tracks have become more song-oriented, ranging from sultry to braggadocious. Her classy DJ mixes are a study in bounce and groove, incorporating everything from highlife to Afrotech to dubby rollers.

Since re-entering the club circuit in 2018 after a six-year hiatus, KG has become a role model for women talents in the electronic music world. Her stance on racial and gender disparities within the industry has helped orchestrate safer spaces in music, inspiring aspiring Black creatives in the process. KG's RA Podcast is nothing short of sexy, loaded with swung rhythms and lithe drums across gqom, Afrohouse and jazzy deep house. It radiates a level of confidence and intimacy that can only come from years of vision—and a constant passion for sensual, soulful music.

@KARENNYAMEKG

Read more at https://ra.co/podcast/936

RA.936 Karen Nyame KG

This past February, Tesfa Williams released his debut album—over 20 years into his career. Raves Of Future Past distilled decades of experience on London dance floors into a potent and powerful blend of grime, house, rave and techno. Made with an Elektron Digitakt to imitate the rough textures of early '00s UK dance music, the LP is an anachronistic history lesson that throws everything in a blender, imagining what gqom might sound like as an Eski track and giving new life to the short-lived "sublow" sound Williams helped invent with classic tracks like "Invasion," released under his earlier alias DJ Dread D.

Since the sublow days, however, Williams has become a torchbearer for UK house music and African diasporic sounds like Afro house and gqom in London. He's put out soulful hits like "Heartbeat"—recently reissued by Local Action—and released a steady stream of dance records for PMR and Strictly Rhythm. He's what you might call a jack of all trades, except for that he's actually a master of them all.

His RA Podcast charts his musical journey in reverse chronological order, starting with smooth, African-influenced sounds and winding through grime and dubstep, eventually landing at jungle. He threads a needle through diverse genres (and eras), and posits that the traditional UK hardcore continuum is a bigger spectrum than you might think, with gqom's heave and amapiano's log drum equally important in the musical equation. It's nearly two hours of UK dance music past and present, from a DJ who has lived it all.

@twilliamsmusic

Read more at https://ra.co/podcast/935

RA.935 T.Williams

Simon Aussel is known for a particularly wild DJing style and leftfield bassy bangers, and it's his curious and playful approach to clubland that's won him loyal fans over the years. Whether photographing drink tokens from gigs or creating an 8-bit version of his debut album on a Game Boy cartridge, he seems to approach every endeavour with childlike joy and wonder—rare qualities in an industry that can leave so many jaded.

The Nantes-born, Paris-based artist's love of club culture, digging and world-building has set him on a blazing path in club music. He's released an exceptionally wide range of music, including a Memphis rap tape for Trilogy Tapes, dubstep-trap-jazz hybrids with Egyptian singer Abdullah Miniawy and deadly hard drum for Livity Sound. His mixes, meanwhile, are fast becoming DJ lore thanks to his knack for connecting seemingly opposed genres like new wave and fast techno. Look no further than his now-infamous Dekmantel Selectors set from 2021 or a marathon back-to-back with Skee Mask in 2022. 

As the French DJ gets more comfortable with story-telling, he's getting more personal and focusing on deeper, slower sounds. That's evident on this RA Podcast—six months in the works—which incorporates woozy downtempo, weighty dub and bleepy beats. Of course, in the chaotic middle section there's plenty of huge basslines, plus old-school electro, acidic techno and even a bouncy edit of the Montell Jordan classic "This Is How We Do It." Showcasing his quirks, influences and growth, this is Simo Cell in prime time.

@simocell

Read more at https://ra.co/podcast/934

RA.820 DJ Lag

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